THE 

JAPANESE SPIRIT 

BY 

OKAKURA-YOSHISABURO 




Gopyiiglit}i^_ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 



THE 

JAPANESE SPIRIT 

BY 
OKAKURA-YOSHISABURO 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

GEORGE MEREDITH 



NEW YORK 

JAMES POTT & CO. 
1905 



Copyright, 1905, by James Pott & Co. 

First Impression, April, 1905 ^ Q^i 



LiBSARYof GONQRESS' 
Two Copies rteceivi*.) 

APH 19 iyo5 

^Oopyrigni tntry 









J. F. TAPLBY CO., BOOK MANUFACTURERS, NEW YORK 



TO 
MY BROTHER 

Bellario. Sir, if I have made 

A fault in ignorance, instruct my youth : 
I shall be willing, if not able, to learn: 
Age and experience will adorn my mind 
With larger knowledge; and if I have done 
A wilful fault, think me not past all hope 
For once. 

Philaster, Act. ii. So. i. 



PREFACE 

The following pages owe their existence to 
Mr. Martin White, whose keen interest in 
comparative sociology led to the opening of 
special courses for its investigation in the 
University of London. 

My thanks are due to Mr. P. J. Hartog, 
Academic Registrar of the University, as 
well as to Dr. and Mrs. E. R. Edwards, 
who inspired me with the courage to take 
the present task on my inexperienced shoul- 
ders. But above all I render the expression 
of my deepest obligation to Professor Walter 
Rippmann. Had it not been for his friendly 
interest and help, I would not have been able 
thus to come before an English public. For 
the peculiarities of thought and language, 



viii THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

which, if nothing else, might at least make 
the booklet worthy of a perusal, I naturally 
assume the full responsibility myself. 

With these prefatory words, I venture to 
submit this essay to the lenient reception of 
my readers. 



INTRODUCTION 

We have had illuminating books upon 
Japan. Those of Lafcadio Hearn will al- 
ways be remembered for the poetry he 
brought in them to bear upon the poetic as- 
pects of the country and the people. Bud- 
dhism had a fascination for him, as it had for 
Mr. Fielding in his remarkable book on the 
practice of this religion in Burma/ There 
is also the work of Captain Brinkley, to 
which we are largely indebted. 

These Lectures by a son of the land, deliv- 
ered at the University of London, are com- 
pendious and explicit in a degree that enables 
us to form a summary of much that has been 

* The Soul of a People. 

ix 



X THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

otherwise partially obscure, so that we get 
nearer to the secret of this singular race than 
we have had the chance of doing before. He 
traces the course of Confucianism, Laoism, 
Shintoism, in the instruction it has given to 
his countrymen for the practice of virtue, 
as to which Lao-tze informs us with a piece 
of ' Chinese metaphysics ' that can be had 
without having recourse to the dictionary: 
' Superior virtue is non-virtue. Therefore 
it has virtue. Inferior virtue never loses 
sight of virtue. Therefore it has no virtue. 
Superior virtue' is non-assertive and without 
pretension. Inferior virtue asserts and 
makes pretensions.' It is childishly subtle 
and easy to be understood of a young people 
in whose minds Buddhism and Shintoism 
formed a part. 

The Japanese have had the advantage of 
possessing a native Nobility who were true 
nobles, not invaders and subjugators. They 
were, in the highest sense, men of honour, 



INTRODUCTION xi 

to whom, before the time of this dreadful 
war, Hara-kiri was an imperative resource, 
under the smallest suspicion of disgrace. 
How rigidly they understood and practised 
Virtue, in the sense above cited, is exempli- 
fied in the way they renounced their privi- 
leges for the sake of the commonweal when 
the gates of Japan were thrown open to the 
West. 

Bushido, or the ' way of the Samurai,' has 
become almost an English word, so greatly 
has it impressed us with the principle of re- 
nunciation on behalf of the Country's wel- 
fare. This splendid conception of duty has 
been displayed again and again at Port 
Arthur and on the fields of Manchuria, not 
only by the Samurai, but by a glorious com- 
monalty imbued with the spirit of their 
chiefs. 

All this is shown clearly by Professor 
Okakura in this valuable book. 

It proves to general comprehension that 



xii THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

such a people must be unconquerable even 
if temporarily defeated; and that is not the 
present prospect of things. Who could con- 
quer a race of forty millions having the con- 
tempt of death when their country's inviola- 
bility is at stake! Death, moreover, is de- 
spised by them because they do not believe 
in it. ' The departed, although invisible, are 
thought to be leading their ethereal life in the 
same world in much the same state as that to 
which they had been accustomed while on 
earth.' And so, * when the father of a Japan- 
ese family begins a journey of any length, 
the raised part of his room will be made sa- 
cred to his memory during his temporary ab- 
sence; his family will gather in front of it 
and think of him, expressing their devotion 
and love in words and gifts in kind. In the 
hundreds of thousands of families that have 
some one or other of their members fighting 
for the nation in this dreadful war, there will 
not be even one solitary house where the 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

mother, wife, or sister is not practising this 
simple rite of endearment for the beloved and 
absent member of the family.' Spartans in 
the fight, Stoics in their grief. 

Concerning the foolish talk of the Yellow 
Peril, a studious perusal of this book will 
show it to be fatuous. It is at least unlikely 
in an extreme degree that such a people, reck- 
less of life though they be in front of dan- 
ger, but Epicurean in their wholesome love 
of pleasure and pursuit of beauty, will be in- 
flated to insanity by the success of their arms. 
Those writers who have seen something ma- 
lignant and inimical behind their gracious 
politeness, have been mere visitors on the 
fringe of the land, alarmed by their skill in 
manufacturing weapons and explosives — for 
they are inventive as well as imitative, a peo- 
ple not to be trifled with ; but this was be- 
cause their instinct as well as their emissar- 
ies warned them of a pressing need for the 
means of war. Japan and China have had 



XIV THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

experience of Western nations, and that is 
at the conscience of suspicious minds. 

It may be foreseen that when the end has 
come, the Kaiser, always honourably eager 
for the influence of his people, will draw a 
glove over the historic * Mailed Fist ' and 
offer it to them frankly. It will surely be 
accepted, and that of France, we may hope; 
Russia as well. England is her ally — to re- 
main so, we trust; America is her friend. 
She has, in fact, won the admiration of 
Friend and Foe alike. 

GEORGE MEREDITH. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

Since the end of the thirteenth century, 
when Marco Polo, on his return to Venice, 
wrote about * Cipango,' an island, as he 
stated, * 1500 miles off the coast of China, 
fabulously rich, and inhabited by people of 
agreeable manners,' many a Western pen 
has been wielded to tell all kinds of tales 
concerning the Land of the Rising Sun. Her 
long seclusion; her anxious care to guard 
inviolate the simple faith which had been 
gravely threatened by the Roman Church; 
her hearty welcome of the honoured guests 
from the West, after centuries of independ- 
ent growth; the sudden, almost pathetic, 
changes she has gone through in the past 
forty years in order to equip herself for a 
place on the world's stage where powers play 
their game of balance; the lessons she lately 
taught the still slumbering China through 

IS 



i6 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

the mouths of thundering cannon: all this 
has called into existence the expression of 
opinions and comments of very varying 
merit and tone; and especially since the out- 
break of the present war, when the daily 
news from the scenes of action, where my 
brethren are fighting for the cause of 
wronged justice and menaced liberty, is 
showing the world page after page of pa- 
triotism and loyalty, written unmistakably 
in the crimson letters of heroes' blood, — all 
this has given occasion to Europe and Amer- 
ica to think the matter over afresh. Here 
you have at least a nation different in her 
development from any existing people in the 
Occident. Governed from time immemorial 
by the immediate descendants of the Sun- 
Goddess, whose merciful rule early taught us 
to offer them our voluntary tribute of devo- 
tion and love, we have based our social sys- 
tem on filial piety, that necessary outcome of 
ancestor-worship which presupposes altru- 
ism on the one hand, and on the other loy- 
alty and love of the fatherland. Different 
doctrines of religion and morality have found 
their way from their continental homes to 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 17 

the silvery shores of the Land of the Gods, 
only to render their several services towards 
consolidating and widening the so-called 
' Divine Path/ that national cult whose un- 
written tenets have lurked for thousands of 
years hidden in the most sacred corner of our 
hearts, whose pulse is ever beating its rhythm 
of patriotism and loyalty. Buddhist meta- 
physics, Confucian and Taoist philosophy, 
have been fused together in the furnace of 
Shintoism for fifteen centuries and a half, 
and that apart from the outer world, in the 
island home of Japan, where the blue sky 
looks down on gay blossoms and gracefully 
sloping mountains. The final amalgamation 
of these forces produces, among other results, 
the works of art and the feats of bravery 
now before you, each bearing the ineffaceable 
hall-marks of Japan's past history. Surely 
here you are face to face with a people 
worthy of serious investigation, not only 
from the disinterested point of view of a 
folk-psychologist. It is a study which will 
open to any impartial observer a new hori- 
zon, more so than would be the case if he 
attempted the sociological interpretation of a 
B 



i8 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

nation the history of whose development was 
almost identical with that of his own. Here 
he meets totally different sets of things with 
totally different ways of looking at them; 
and this gives him ample occasion to realise 
the fact that human thought and action may 
evolve in several forms and through several 
channels before they reach their respective 
culmination where they all, regardless of 
their original differences, melt into the com- 
mon sea of truth. 

But this simple fact that * God fulfills 
Himself in many ways,' as your Tennyson 
has it, so necessary to ensure freedom from 
national bigotry and conventional ignorance, 
so necessary too for a proper understanding 
of oneself as the cumulative product of a na- 
tion's history, has not always been kept in 
mind, even by those otherwise well-meaning 
authors, whose works have some charm as 
descriptive writing, but give only a superfi- 
cial and often misleading account of the in- 
ner life of the nation. True, a great deal of 
excellent work has been achieved by a num- 
ber of scholars of lasting merit, from 
Kaempfe's memorable work first published 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 19 

in its English translation as early as 1727, 
clown to the admirable Interpretation writ- 
ten last year by the late Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, 
in whose death Japan lost one of her most 
precious friends, possessing as he did the 
scholar's insight and the poet's pen, two 
heavenly gifts seldom found united in a sin- 
gle man. It is mainly through the remark- 
able labour of two learned bodies, the Asiatic 
Society of Japan, and the Deutsche Geselh 
scha^t fur Natur- und Volkerkunde Qstas- 
ienSj both with their headquarters in Tokyo 
— in whose indefatigable researches the 
' Japan Society ' in this city has ably joined 
since 1892 — that most valuable data have 
been constantly brought to light, furnishing 
for future students sure bases for wider gen- 
eralisations. But owing to the numerous 
hindrances — some of which look almost in- 
surmountable to the Western investigator — 
a fair synthetic interpretation of Japan as a 
nation, explaining all the important forces 
that underlie the psychic and physical phe- 
nomena, still remains to be written. The 
most formidable of the difficulties which 
meet a European or American student at the 



20 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

very threshold of his researches is the totally 
different construction of Japanese society, a 
difficulty which makes it impossible to under- 
stand properly any set of the phenomena be- 
longing to it apart from the others which 
surround them. One could as well cut a sin- 
gle mesh from a net without prejudice to the 
neighbouring ones ! The proper understand- 
ing of things Japanese therefore presupposes 
freedom from your conventional philosophy 
of life, and the power of viewing things 
through other people's eyes. 

Besides this obstacle, there are many oth- 
ers ; for example, that of the language. Like 
most other nations in the East, we have been 
accustomed, up to this very, day, to use a 
written language, divided within itself into 
several styles, which is considerably different 
from the vernacular. To make this state of 
things still more complicated, Chinese char- 
acters are profusely resorted to in the native 
writings, and are used not only as so many 
ideographs for words of Chinese origin, but 
also to represent native words. To make 
confusion worse confounded, they are not 
infrequently used as pure phonetic symbols 



iTHE JAPANESE SPIRIH 2B 

without any further meaning attaching to 
them. So one and the same sign may be 
read in half a dozen different ways, accord- 
ing to the hints, more or less sure, given by 
the context. All this makes the study of 
Japanese immensely difficult. It is difficult 
even for a Japanese with the best opportuni- 
ties; a hundred times more so, then, for a 
Western scholar who, if he cares to study the 
subject at first hand at all, begins this study, 
comparatively speaking, late in life, when 
his memory has well-nigh lost the capacity 
of bearing such an enormous burden ! 

Still, there have been many Western schol- 
ars who, nothing daunted by the above-men- 
tioned hindrances, have done much valuable 
work. English names like those of Sir E. 
Satow, G. W. Aston, B. H. Chamberlain, 
Lafcadio Hearn are to be gratefully remem- 
bered by all future students in this field of 
inquiry, as well as such German scholars as 
Dr. Baelz and Dr. Florenz. Leaving the 
enumeration of general works on Japan, 
whose name is legion, for some other time, 
let me mention one or two of those works of 
reference which a would-be English scholar 



22 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

of Japanese matters might find very useful. 
First of all Mr. B. H. Chamberlain's Things 
Japanese — a book which gave birth to Mr. 
J. D. Hall's equally indispensable Things 
Chinese — containing in cyclopaedic form a 
mine of information about Japan. Dr. 
Wenckstern's painstaking Japanese Bibliog- 
raphy, with M. de Losny's earlier attempt 
as a supplement, gives you the list of all writ- 
ings on Japan in European tongues that have 
appeared up to 1895. For those who want 
good books on the Japanese language, Mr. 
Aston's Grammar of the Japanese Written 
Language, Mr. Chamberlain's ITamdbook of 
Colloquial Japanese, as well as the same au- 
thor's Monzi-no-Shirubi, a Practical Intro- 
duction to the Study of the Japanese Writ- 
ing, are the best. As for books on the subject 
from the pen of the Japanese themselves, Dr. 
Nitobe's Bushido, Explanations of the Japan- 
ese Thought, and my brother K. Okakura's 
Ideals of the East, besides a volume by sev- 
eral well-known Japanese, entitled Japan by 
the Japanese, are to be specially mentioned.^ 

* Professor T. Inouye*s little pamphlet, published 
first in French, entitled Sur le Developpement des 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 2t, 

What I myself propose to do in this essay 
is to give to the best of my abiHty, and so far 
as is possible with the scanty knowledge and 
the limited space at my disposal, a simple 
statement in plain language of what I think 
to be the fundamental truths necessary for 
the proper understanding of my fatherland. 
I am not vain enough to attempt any original 
solution of the old difficulty; knowing as I 
do my own deficiencies, I should be well sat- 
isfied if I could manage to give you some 
kind of general introduction to the Japanese 
views of life. 

So much for the preliminary remarks. Let 
us now take a step further and see what fac- 
tors are to be considered as the bases of mod- 
ern Japan. 

' To which race do the Japanese belong? ' 
is the first question asked by any one who 
wants to approach our subject from the his- 

Idees Philosophiques au Japon avant I' Introduction 
de la Civilisation Europeenne, will give you some idea 
of our philosophic systems. For a serious perusal, its 
German translation, annotated and amplified, by Dr. 
A. Gramatzky {Kurze Ubersicht iiber die Entwick- 
lung der philosophischen Ideen in Japan, Berlin, 
1897), is to be preferred. 



24 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

torical point of view. Unfortunately not 
much is known as yet about our place in 
racial science. If we do not take into ac- 
count the inhabitants of the newly annexed 
island of Formosa, we have, roughly speak- 
ing, two very different races in our whole 
archipelago — the hairy Aino and the ruling 
Yamato race, the former being the supposed 
aborigines, physically sturdy and well de- 
veloped, with their characteristic abundant 
growth of hair, who are at present to be 
found only in the Yezo island in the north- 
ern extremity of Japan, and whose number, 
notwithstanding all the care of our govern- 
ment, is fast dwindling, the sum total being 
not much more than 15,000. The Aino have 
a tradition that the land had been occupied 
before them by another race of dwarfish stat- 
ure called Koropokguru, who are identified 
by some scholars with those primitive pit- 
dwellers known in our history as Tuchigu- 
mo,^ whose traces, although scanty, are still 
to be met with in various parts of Yezo. 
Anyhow, we see at the first dawn of history 

^ Professor Milne, Transactions of the Asiatic So- 
ciety of Japan, vol. viii. p. 82. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 25 

the aborigines gradually receding before 
the conquering Yamato race, who are found 
steadily pushing on towards the north-east, 
and who finally established themselves as a 
ruling body under the divine banner of the 
first emperor Jimmu, from whose acces- 
sion we reckon our era, the present year be- 
ing the 2565th, according to our recognised 
way of counting dates. 

Suggestions, audacious rather than strictly 
scientific, have been put forward as to the 
original home both of the Aino and the Jap- 
anese. The Rev. I. Dooman, for instance, 
proposed in his paper read before the meet- 
ing of the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1897 
to derive both from the people who had been 
living, according to him, on both sides of the 
great Himalayan range. * The Aino,' he 
says, ' the first inhabitants of these (Japan- 
ese) islands, belong to the South Himalayan 
Centre ; while the Japanese, the second com- 
ers, belong to the North Himalayan, com- 
monly called Altaic races.' ^ But in face of 
the scanty knowledge at our command about 

* Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 

XXV. 



26 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

the respective sets of people in question, such 
wholesale conjecture had better be postponed 
until some later time, when further research 
shall have supplied surer data for our 
speculations. As regards the Aino, we must 
for the present say, on the authority of Mr. 
Chamberlain, that, remembering how the 
Aino race is isolated from all other living 
races by its hairiness and by the extraordi- 
nary flattening of the tibia and humerus, it 
is not strange to find the language isolated 
too.^ 

With respect to the Japanese proper, the 
only thing known about their racial affinity 
is the theory proposed by the German scholar 
Dr. Baelz, as the result of his elaborate meas- 
urements both of living specimens and skele- 
tons.^ He considers the Yamato race to be- 
long to the Mongolian stock of the Asiatic 
continent, from where they proceeded to Ja- 
pan by way of the Corean peninsula. There 

^ Memoirs of the Literary Department of the Uni- 
versity of Tokyo, vol. i. 

^ Die korperlichen Eigenschaften der Japaner, vols, 
xxviii. and xxxii. of Mittheilungen der Gesellschaft 
fiir die Natur- und Volkerkunde Ostasiens. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 2y 

are two distinct types noticeable among them 
at present, one characterised by a deHcate, 
refined appearance, with oval face, rather 
oblique eyes, slightly Roman nose, and a 
frame not vigorous yet well proportioned; 
the other marked out by broader face, pro- 
jecting cheek bones, flat nose, and horizontal 
eyes, while the body is more robust and mus- 
cular, though not so well proportioned and 
regular. The former is to be met with 
among the better classes and in the southern 
parts of Japan, while the specimens of the 
latter are found rather among the labouring 
population, and are more abundant in the 
northern provinces. This difference of 
types, aristocratic and plebeian, w^hich is still 
more conspicuous among the fair sex, is with 
good reason attributed to the two-fold wave 
of Mongolian emigration which reached our 
island in prehistoric times. The first emi- 
grants, consisting of coarser tribes of the 
Mongolian race, landed most probably on the 
northern coast of the main island somewhere 
in the present Idzumo province, and settled 
down there, while the second wave broke on 
the shores of Kyiashu. These emigrants 



28 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

seem to have belonged to the more refined 
branch of the great Mongolian stock. This 
hypothesis is borne out by our mythology, 
which divides itself into two cycles, one cen- 
tring at Idzumo and the other at Kyushu, 
and which tell us how the great-grandfather 
of the first great emperor Jimmu descended 
from heaven on to the peak of the mountain 
Takachiho in Hyuga in Kyushu. Accom- 
panied by his brother, he started from this 
spot on his march of conquering migration 
to Yamato, fighting and subduing on his way 
tribes who on the continent were once his kith 
and kin. 

It might perhaps interest you to know 
something of our prevailing idea of personal 
beauty, especially as, in such a homogeneous 
nation as the Japanese, ruled from time im- 
memorial by one and the same line of dyn- 
asty, it may help us to make some vague con- 
jectures as to the physical appearances of at 
least one of those continental tribes out of 
which our nation has been formed. The 
standard of beauty naturally fluctuates a lit- 
tle according to sex and locality. In a lady, 
for example, mildness and grace are, gener- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 29 

ally speaking, preferred to that strength or 
manliness of expression which would be 
thought more becoming in her brother. 
Tokyo again does not put so much stress on 
the fleshiness of limbs and face as does 
Kyoto. But, as a whole, there is only one 
ideal throughout the Empire. So let me try 
to enumerate all the qualities usually con- 
sidered necessary to make a beautiful wom- 
an. She is to possess a body not much ex- 
ceeding five feet in height, with compara- 
tively fair skin and proportionately well- 
developed limbs; a head covered with long, 
thick, and jet-black hair; an oval face with a 
straight nose, high and narrow ; rather large 
eyes, with large deep-brown pupils and thick 
eyelashes; a small mouth, hiding behind its 
red, but not thin, lips even rows of small 
white teeth; ears not altogether small; and 
long and thick eyebrows forming two hori- 
zontal but slightly curved lines, with a space 
left between them and the eyes. Of the four 
ways in which hair can grow round the up- 
per edge of the forehead, viz., horned, 
square, round, and Fuji-shaped, one of the 
last two is preferred, a very high as well as 



30 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

a very low forehead being considered not 
attractive. 

Such are, roughly speaking, the elements 
of Japanese female beauty. Eyes and eye- 
brows with the outer ends turning consider- 
ably upwards, with which your artists depict 
us, are due to those Japanese colour prints 
which strongly accentuate our dislike of the 
reverse, for straight eyes and eyebrows make 
a very bad impression on us, suggesting 
weakness, lasciviousness, and so on. It must 
also be understood that in Japan no such va- 
riety of types of beauty is to be met with as 
is noticed here in Europe. Blue eyes and 
blond hair, the charms of which we first 
learn to feel after a protracted stay among 
you, are regarded in a Japanese as something 
extraordinary in no favourable sense of the 
term ! A girl with even a slight tendency to 
grey eyes or frizzly hair is looked upon as an 
unwelcome deviation from the national type. 

If we now consider our mythology, with a 
view to tracing the continental home of the 
Yamato race, we find, to our disappointment, 
that our present knowledge is too scanty to 
allow us to arrive at a conclusion. Indeed, 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 31 

so long as the general science of mythology 
itself remains in that unsettled condition in 
which its youth obliges it to linger, and es- 
pecially so long as the Indian and Chinese 
bodies of myths — by which our mythology 
is so unmistakably influenced — do not re- 
ceive more serious systematic treatment, the 
recorded stories of the Japanese deities can- 
not be expected to supply us with much indi- 
cation as to our continental home. One thing 
is certain about them, that they were not free 
from influences exerted by the different 
myths prevalent among the Chinese and the 
Indians at the time when they were written 
down in our earliest history, the Ko-ji-ki or 
Records of Ancient Matter, completed in 
A.D. 712. There is an excellent English trans- 
lation of the book, with an admirable intro- 
duction and notes, by Mr. B. H. Chamber- 
lain. According to this book, the original 
ethereal chaos with which the world began 
gradually congealed, and was finally divided 
into heaven and earth. The male and female 
principles now at work gave birth to several 
deities, until a pair of deities named Izanagi 
and Izanami, or the ' Male-who-invites ' and 



Z2 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

the ' Female-who-invites/ were produced. 
They married, and produced first of all the 
islands of Japan big and small, and then dif- 
ferent deities, until the birth of the Fire-God 
cost the divine mother her life. She subse- 
quently retired to the Land of Darkness or 
Hades, where her sorrowful consort de- 
scended, Orpheus-like, in quest of his spouse. 
He failed to bring her back to the outer 
world, for, like the Greek musician, he broke 
his promise not to look at her in her more 
profound retirement. The result was disas- 
trous. Izanagi barely escaped from his now 
furious wife, and on coming back to daylight 
he washed himself in a stream, in order to 
purify himself from the hideous sights and 
the pollution of the nether-world. This cus- 
tom of lustration is, by the way, kept up to 
this day in the symbolic sprinkling of salt 
over persons returning from a funeral — salt 
representing pure water, as our name for it, 
' the flower of the waves,' well indicates. Our 
love of cleanliness and of bathing might be 
also recognised in this early custom. Impur- 
ity, whether mental or corporal, has always 
been regarded as a great evil, and even as a sin. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 33 

Now one of the most important results of 
the purification of the god Izanagi was the 
birth of three important deities through the 
washing of his eyes and nose. The Moon- 
God and the Sun-Goddess emerged from his 
washing his right and left eyes, while Su- 
sanowo, their youngest brother, owed his ex- 
istence to the washing of his nose; three il- 
lustrious children to whom the divine 
father trusted the dominion of night, day, 
and the seas. 

The last-mentioned deity, whose name 
would mean in English ' Prince Impetuous,' 
lost his father's favour by his obstinate long- 
ing to see Izanami, the divine mother, in 
Hades, and was expelled from the father's 
presence. He eventually went up to heaven 
to pay a visit to his sister, the Sun-Goddess, 
whom he gravely offended by his monstrous 
outrages on her person, and who was conse- 
quently so angry that she shut herself up in a 
rocky chamber, thus causing darkness in the 
world outside. In accordance with the de- 
liberate plans worked out by an assembly of 
a myriad gods, she was at last allured from 
her cavern by the sounds of wild merriment 
C 



34 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

caused by the burlesque dancing of a female 
deity, and day reigned once more. 

The now repenting offender was driven 
down from heaven, and he wandered about 
the earth. It was during this wandering that 
in Idzumo he, like Perseus, rescued a beauti- 
ful young maid from an eight-headed ser- 
pent. He won her hand and lived very hap- 
pily with her ever after. 

In the meantime the state of things in the 
' High Plain of Heaven ' ripened to the 
point that the Sun-Goddess began to think 
of sending her august child to govern the 
* Luxuriant-Reed-Plain-Land-of-Fresh-Rice- 
Ears,' that is to say, Japan. Messages were 
previously sent to pacify the land for the re- 
ception of the divine ruler. This took much 
time, during which a grandson was born to 
the Sun-Goddess, and in the end it was this 
grandson who was designated to come down 
to earth instead of his father. On his de- 
parture a formal command to descend and 
rule the land now placed under his care was 
accompanied by the present of a mirror, a 
sword, and a string of crescent-shaped jew- 
els. These treasures, still preserved in our 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 35 

imperial household as regaHa, are generally 
interpreted to mean the three virtues of wis- 
dom, courage, and mercy — necessary quali- 
ties for a perfect ruler. It was on the high 
peak of Mount Takachiho that the divine 
ruler descended to earth. He settled down in 
the country until his great-grandson, known 
in history as Emperor Jimmu, founded the 
empire and began that unique line of rulers 
who have governed the * Land of the Gods ' 
for more than two thousand years, the pres- 
ent emperor being the hundred and twenty- 
first link in the eternal chain. 

Such is, in brief, the story about my coun- 
try before it was brought under the rule of 
one central governing body. Subjected to 
scientific scrutiny the whole tale presents 
many gaps in logical sequence. It betrays, 
besides, traces of an intermingling of the 
early beliefs of other nations. Still, it must 
be said that the divine origin of our emperors 
has invested their throne with the double halo 
of temporal and of spiritual power from the 
earliest days of their ascendancy; and the 
people, themselves the descendants of those 
patriarchs who served under the banners of 



36 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

Emperor Jimmu, or else of those who early 
learned to- bow themselves down before the 
divine conqueror, have looked up to this 
throne with an- ever-growing reverence and 
pride. 

In. primitive Japan, as in every other prim- 
itive human society, ancestor-worship was 
the first form of belief. Each family had its 
own* departed spirits of forefathers to whom 
was dedicated a daily homage of simple 
words and offerings in kind. The guardian 
ghosts demanded of their living descendants 
that they should be good and brave in their 
own way. As these families of the same race 
and language gathered themselves around 
the strongest of them all, imbued with a firm 
belief in its divine origin, they contributed in 
their turn their own myths to the imperial 
ones, thus eventually forming and consolidat- 
ing a national cult; and it was but natural 
that the people's heart should come in course 
of time to re-echo in harmony with the key- 
note struck by the one through whom the 
gods breathe eternal life. The whole nation 
is bound by that sacred tie of common belief 
and common thought. Here lies the great 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 2>7 

gap that separates, for example, the Chinese 
cult of fatahsm from our Path of Gods as a 
moral force. The Chinese have believed 
from the earliest times in one supreme god 
whom they called the Divine Presider 
{Shang-ti) or the August Heaven (Hwang- 
fien or simply T'ien), who, according to 
their notion, carefully selects a fit person 
from among swarming mankind to be the 
temporary ruler of his fellow-countrymen, 
but only for so long as it pleases the god to 
let him occupy the throne. At the expiration 
of a certain period, the heavenly mission 
{Vien-ming) is transferred through blood- 
shed and national disaster to another mor- 
tal, who exercises the earthly rule until he 
or his descendants incur the disfavour of the 
^ Heaven above.' To this day the Chinese 
word for revolution means the ' renovation 
of missions ' (kzueh-ming) . This fatalistic 
idea, which is but a natural outcome of the 
almost too democratic nature of the people 
of the Celestial Empire and of the frequent 
changes of dynasties it has had to go 
through, is almost unknown in our island 
home in its gravest aspects ; more than that, 



38 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

ever since its introduction into Japan, this 
idea, along with the Indian doctrine of piti- 
less fate, has gradually taught us to offer a 
more resigned and determined service to our 
respective superiors who culminate in the 
divine person of the Emperor himself. This 
is well illustrated by the fact that no attempt 
at the formal occupation of the throne has 
ever been made, even on the part of those 
powerful Shoguns who were the real rulers 
of our country ; they knew full well how dan- 
gerous and fatal for themselves it would be 
to tamper with that hinge on which the na- 
tion's religious life turns. Only once in our 
long history is there an example of an unsuc- 
cessful attempt (and it is the highest treason 
a Japanese subject can think of), when a 
Buddhist monk named Dokyo, encouraged 
by the undue devotion of the ruling empress, 
tried to ascend the throne by means of the 
recognition of the higher temporal rank of 
the Buddhist priesthood over the imperial 
ministry of the native cult. This imminent 
danger was averted by the bold and resolute 
patriotism of a Shinto priest, Wake-no-Kiyo- 
maro, who, in Luther-like defiance of all peril 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 39 

and personal risks, declared fearlessly, in the 
very presence of the haughty and menacing 
head of the Buddhist Church, the divine will, 
' Japan is to know no emperor except in the 
person of the divine descendants of the Sun- 
Goddess ! ' 

Turning now to the question of language, 
we must confess that the linguistic affinities 
of Japanese are as little cleared up as the 
other problems we have been considering. 
The only thing we know about the Japanese 
language amounts to this : it belongs, mor- 
phologically speaking, to the so-called agglu- 
tinative languages, e.g., those which express 
their grammatical functions by the addition 
of etymologically independent elements — 
prefixes and suffixes — ^to the unchangeable 
roots or base forms. Genealogically, to fol- 
low the classification expounded by Friedrich 
Miiller in his Grundriss der Sprachwissen- 
schaft, who based his system on HaeckeFs 
division of the human race by the nature and 
particularly the section of the hair, Japanese 
is one of the languages or groups of lan- 
guages spoken by the Mongolian race. 

But this characterisation of our tongue 



40 THE JAP.VNESE SPIRIT 

does not help us much. One could as well 
point to the East at large to show where Ja- 
pan lies! Notwithstanding the general un- 
certainty as regards the exact position of our 
language, this much is sure, that Japanese 
has, in spite of the immense number of loan- 
words of Chinese origin, no fundamental 
connection with the monosyllabic language 
of China, whose different syntactical nature 
and want of common roots baffles the at- 
tempts on the part of some speculative Euro- 
peans to connect it with our own tongue. At 
the same time, it is well known among com- 
petent scholars that Japanese, with its most 
distant dialect Luchuan, bears great kinship 
to the Corean, Manchurian, and Mongolian 
languages. It shares with them, besides the 
dislike of commencing a word with a trilled 
sound or with a sonant, almost the same 
rules for the arrangement of the component 
elements of a sentence. According to the 
Japanese syntax, the following rules can, for 
instance, be applied to Corean without al- 
teration :— 

I. All the qualifying words and phrases 
are put before those they qualify. At- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 41 

tributive adjectives and adverGs, and 
their equivalents, are placed before 
nouns and verbs they modify. 

2. The grammatical subject stands at the 

beginning of the sentence. 

3. Predicative elements are at the end of a 

sentence. 

4. Direct and indirect objects follow the 

subject. 

5. Subordinate sentences precede the prin- 

cipal ones. 

One thing worthy of notice is the fact that, 
notwithstanding the most convincing struc- 
tural similarity that exists between these 
affiliated languages, they contain, compara- 
tively speaking, few words in common, even 
among the numerals and personal pronouns, 
which have played such an important part 
in Indo-European philology. We must still 
wait a long time before a better knowledge 
of linguistic affinity reveals such decisive 
links of connection as will enable us to trace 
our Japanese home on the continent. 

Let us now consider what were the effects 
of the continental civilisation on the mental 



42 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

development of the Japanese within their in- 
sular home. 

Before entering into details about the vari- 
ous continental doctrines implanted in our 
country from China and India, it may be 
well to tell you something of the mental at- 
titude of the Japanese in facing a new form 
of culture, in many senses far superior to 
their own. Nothing definite can perhaps be 
said about it; but when we grope along the 
main cord of historical phenomena we think 
we find that the Japanese as a whole are not 
a people with much aptitude for deep meta- 
physical ways of thinking. They are not of 
the calibre from which you expect a Kant or 
a Schopenhauer. Warlike by nature more 
than anything else, they have been known 
from the very beginning to have had the 
soldier-like simplicity and the easy content- 
ment of men of action — qualities which the 
practical nature of Confucian ethics had am- 
ple chance to develop. The abstruse concep- 
tions of Chinese or Indian origin have been 
received into the Japanese mind just as they 
were preached, and usually we have not trou- 
bled ourselves to think them out again ; but 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 43 

in accordance with our peculiarly quick habit 
of perceiving the inner meaning of things, 
we have generalised them straight away and 
turned them immediately into so many work- 
ing principles. There are any number of in- 
stances of slight hints given by some people 
on the continent and worked out to suit our 
own purposes into maxims of immediate and 
practical value. Ideals in their original 
home are ideals no longer in our island home. 
They are interpreted into so many realities 
with a direct bearing on our daily life. We 
have been and are, even to this day, always 
in need of some new hints and suggestions 
to work up into so many dynamic forces for 
practical use. Upon Europe and America 
the full power of our mental searchlight is 
now playing, in quest of those new ideas for 
future development for which we have been 
accustomed to draw mainly on China and 
India. Even such a commonplace thing as 
the drinking of a cup of tea becomes in our 
hands something more : it becomes a training 
in stoic serenity, in the capacity of smiling 
at life's troubles and disturbances. Some 
day you might learn from us a new philoso- 



44 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

phy based on the use of motor cars and tele- 
phones as appHed to Hfe and conduct ! 

This, as you will see, explains why we 
have failed to produce any original thinkers ; 
this is why we have to recognise our indebt- 
edness for almost all the important ideas 
which have brought about social inno- 
vation either to China or to India, or else to 
the modern Western nations; and this not- 
withstanding so many national idiosyncra- 
sies and characteristics which are to be found 
in the productions of our art and in our life 
and ways, and which are even as handfuls of 
grain gathered in foreign fields and brewed 
into a national drink of utterly Japanese fla- 
vour. We are, I think, a people of the Pres- 
ent and the Tangible, of the broad Daylight 
and the plainly Visible. The undeniable pro- 
clivity of our mind in favour of determina- 
tion and action, as contrasted with delibera- 
tion and calm, makes it an uncongenial 
ground for the sublimity and grandeur of 
that * loathed melancholy, of Cerberus and 
blackest midnight born,' to take deep root in 
it. Pure reasoning as such has had for us 
little value beyond the help it affords us in 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 45 

harbouring our drifting thought in some 
nearest port, where we can follow any peace- 
ful occupation rather than be fighting what 
we should call a useless fight with troubled 
billows and unfathomable depths. Such, ac- 
cording to my personal view, are the facts 
about our mentality considered generally. 
And now it is necessary to speak of the main 
waves of cult and culture that successively 
washed our shores. 

The first mention in our history of the in- 
troduction of the Chinese learning into the 
imperial household places it in the reign of 
the fifteenth emperor O-jin, in the year 284 
after Christ according to the earliest native 
records, but according to more trustworthy 
recent computation ^ considerably later than 
that date. We are told that a certain prince 
was put under the tutorship of a learned Co- 
rean scholar of Chinese, who, at the request 
of the emperor, came over to Japan with the 
Confucian Analects (lun-yu) and some 
other Chinese classics as a tribute from the 
King of Kudara. But long before the learn- 
ing of the Celestial Empire found its way 
^ Cp. Bramsen's Japanese Chronological Tables. 



46 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

through Corea into our imperial court, it had 
in all probability been making its silent in- 
fluence felt here and there among the Japan- 
ese people. Great swarms of immigrants 
had sought a final place of rest in our sea- 
girt country from many parts of China, 
where raging tyranny and menacing despot- 
ism made life intolerable even for Chinese 
meekness ; these, and the bands of daring in- 
vaders which Japan sent out from time to 
time to the Corean and Chinese coasts, had 
given us many opportunities of coming into 
contact with the learning prevalent among 
our continental neighbours. In this manner 
Chinese literature, with its groundwork of 
Confucian ethics, surrounded by the strange 
lore derived from Taoism, and perhaps also 
from Hindu sources, had been gradually but 
surely attracting the ever-increasing atten- 
tion of our warlike forefathers, who were to 
become in course of time its devoted ad- 
mirers. 

Now, Confucianism pure and simple, as 
taught by the sage Kung-foo-tsze (551-478 
B.C.), from whom the doctrine derived its 
name, was, notwithstanding the contention 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT • 47 

of the famous English sinologue Dr. Legge, 
nothing more and nothing less than an ag- 
gregate of ethical ideas considered in their 
application to the conduct and duties of our 
everyday life. The great teacher never al- 
lowed himself to be considered an expounder 
of any new system of either religious or 
metaphysical ideas. He was content to call 
himself ' a transmitter and not a maker, be- 
lieving in and loving the ancients.' True to 
the spirit of these words, and most probably 
having no other course open to him on ac- 
count of his extremely utilitarian turn of 
mind, he devoted his whole life to the eluci- 
dation of the True Path of human life, as ex- 
emplified by those half-mythical rulers of old 
China, Yao, Shun, etc., from whom he de- 
rived his ideals and his images of perfect 
man in flesh and blood. These early kings 
were of course no creation of Confucius him- 
self ; the only thing he did was to place the 
forms, which popular tradition had handed 
down surrounded by legendary halos, in high 
relief before the people, as perfect models to 
regulate the earthly conduct of the individ- 
uals as members of a society. His attitude 



48 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

towards the ancient classics which he com- 
piled and perpetuated was that of one trans- 
mitting faithfully. He studied them, and 
exhorted and helped his disciples to do the 
same, but he did not alter them, nor even di- 
gest them into their present form.' ^ In orr 
der to find concrete examples to show his 
ethical views more positively, he wrote a his- 
tory of his native state Loo from J22 to 484 
B.C., in which, while faithfully recording 
events, he took every opportunity to jot down 
his moral judgment upon them in the terse 
words and phrases he knew so well how to 
wield. As abstract reasoning had little 
charm for his practical mind, he systemati- 
cally avoided indulging in discussions of a 
metaphysical nature. * How can we know 
anything of an After-life, when we are so ig- 
norant even of the Living,' was his answer 
when asked by one of his disciples about 
Death. Ancestor-worship he sanctioned, as 
might naturally be expected from his enthus- 
iastic advocacy of things ancient, and also 
from the importance he attached to filial 
piety, which strikes the keynote of his ethi- 
* Legge's The Religion of China, p. 137. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 49 

cal ideas. But here too his indifference to the 
spiritual side of the question is very remark- 
able. Perhaps he found the holy altar of his 
day so much encumbered by the presence of 
innumerable fetishes and demons, that he 
felt little inclination to approach and sweep 
them away. * To give oneself/ he said on 
one occasion, ' to the duties due to men, and 
while respecting spiritual things to keep 
aloof from them, may be called wisdom/ 

The main features which he advocated are 
found well reflected in the first twelve out of 
sixteen articles of the so-called sacred Edict, 
published by the famous K'ang Hsi (1654- 
1722), the second emperor of the present 
Manchu dynasty, in 1670 a.d., which em- 
body the essential points of Confucianism, 
as adapted to the requirements of modern 
everyday Chinese life. 

1. Esteem most highly filial piety and 

brotherly submission, in order to give 
due prominence to the social relations. 

2. Behave with generosity to the branches 
of your kindred, in order to illustrate 
harmony and benignity. 

3. Cultivate peace and concord in your 

D 



50 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

neighbourhood, in order to prevent 
quarrels and litigation. 

4. Recognise the importance of husban- 

dry and the culture of the mulberry- 
tree, in order to ensure sufficiency of 
food and clothing. 

5. Show that you prize moderation and 

economy, in order to prevent the lav- 
ish waste of your means. 

6. Make much of the colleges and semi- 

naries, in order to make correct the 
practice of the scholars. 

7. Discountenance and banish strange 

doctrines, in order to exalt correct 
doctrines. 

8. Describe and explain the laws, in order 

to warn the ignorant and obstinate. 

9. Exhibit clearly propriety and gentle 

courtesy, in order to improve manners 
and customs. 

TO. Labour diligently at your proper call- 
ings, in order to give well-defined 
aims to the people. 

II. Instruct sons and younger brothers, in 
order to prevent them doing what is 
wrong. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 51 

12, Put a stop to false accusations, in order 
to protect the honest and the good. 

Here too you see what an important place 
filial piety occupies, which Confucius him- 
self prized so highly. The Hsiao King, or 
the ' Sacred Book of Filial Piety,' which is 
supposed to record conversations held be- 
tween Confucius and his disciple Tsang Ts'an 
on that weighty subject, has the following 
passage: * He who (properly) serves his 
parents in a high situation will be free from 
'haughtiness; in a low situation he will be 
free from insubordination; whilst among 
his equals he will not be quarrelsome. In a 
high position haughtiness leads to ruin; 
among the lowly insubordination means pun- 
ishment; among equals quarrelsomeness 
tends to the wielding of weapons.' These 
words, naive as they are, express the exalted 
position filial affection occupies in the eyes 
of Confucianism. * Dutiful subjects are to 
be found in the persons of filial sons,' and 
again, ' Filial piety is the source whence all 
other good actions take their rise,' are other 
sayings expressing its importance. 

Along with this virtue, other forms of 



52 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

moral force, such as mercy, uprightness, 
courage, politeness, fidelity, and loyalty, 
have been duly considered and commended 
by the great teacher himself and his disciples. 
Among these, Mencius (373-289 B.C.) is 
most enterprising and attractive, digesting 
and system.atising with a great deal of phil- 
osophic talent the rather fragmentary ideas 
of his great master. It is he who, among 
other things, informs us, on the assumed au- 
thority of a passage in the Shu-King, how 
the sage Shun made it a subject of his anx- 
ious solicitude to teach the five constituent re- 
lationships of society, viz., affection between 
father and son ; relations of righteousness be- 
tween ruler and subject; the assigning of 
their proper spheres to husband and wife; 
distinction of precedence between old and 
young; and fidelity between friend and 
friend — an idea which has played such an 
important part in the history of the develop- 
ment of the Oriental mind. 

Such were the main features of Confu- 
cianism when it first reached Japan, some 
centuries after the Christian era. But it was 
not until some time after the introduction of 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 53 

Buddhism from Corea during the reign of 
the Emperor Kimmei, in 552 a.d.^ that Con- 
fucianism and Chinese learning began to take 
firm root and make their influence fel.t among 
us. Paradoxical as it looks, it is Buddhism 
that so greatly helped the teaching of th£ 
Chinese sage to establish itself as a ruling 
factor in Japanese society. This curious 
state of things came about in this way. The 
gospel of Shakya-muni has, ever since its in- 
troduction into our country, been made ac- 
cessible only through the Chinese transla- 
tion, which demanded a considerable knowl- 
edge of the written language of the Middle 
Kingdom. The keen and far-reaching spir- 
itual interest aroused by Buddhism gave a 
fresh and vigorous impulse to the study of 
Chinese literature, already increasingly 
cultivated for some centuries. Now, the 
knowledge of Chinese in its written form 
has, until quite recently, always been im- 
parted by a painful perusal of the Chinese 
classics and Chinese books deeply imbued 
with Confucianism. It was only after a 
considerable amount of knowledge of this 
difficult language had been obtained in this 



54 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

unnatural way, that one came in contact with 
the works of authors not strictly orthodox. 
This way of teaching Chinese through Con- 
fucian texts, which we adopted from China's 
faithful agent, Corea, necessarily led from 
the very beginning to an intimate acquaint- 
ance with the main aspects of the Confucian 
morals in our upper classes, among whom 
alone the study was at first pursued with any 
seriousness. Although skilled in warlike 
arts, gentle and loyal in domestic life, our 
forefathers were simple in manners and 
thought in those olden days when book- 
learned reasons of duty had not yet super- 
seded the naive observance of the dictates of 
the heart and of responsibility to the ances- 
tral spirits. They possessed no letters of 
their own, and consequently no literature, 
except in unwritten songs and legendary lore 
sung from mouth to mouth, telling of the 
gods and men who formed the glorious past 
of the Yamato race. So it is not difficult to 
imagine the dazzling effect which the Chi- 
nese learning, with its richness and its 
pedantry, with its elaborate system of civil 
government and its philosophy, produced 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 55 

upon our untrained eyes. Gradually but 
steadfastly it had been gaining ground, and 
making its slow way from the topmost rung 
to the bottom of the social ladder, when the 
introduction of Buddhism quickened the now 
resistless progress. The would-be priests 
and advocates of the Indian creed felt a fresh 
impulse and spiritual need to learn the Chi- 
nese language, for which they had long 
entertained a high estimation. Owing to the 
extremely secular character of the Confucian 
ethics on the one hand, and on the other, to 
the fact that Buddhists deny the existence of 
a personal god, and are eager to minister 
salvation through any adequate means so 
long as it does not contradict the Law of the 
Universe upon which the whole doctrine is 
based. Buddhism found in the teaching of the 
Chinese sage and his followers not only no 
enemy, but, on the contrary, a helpful friend. 
It found that the sacred books of Confu- 
cian doctrine contained only in a slightly 
different form the five commandments 
laid down by Shakya-muni himself for 
the regulation of the conduct of a layman, 
viz. : — ' 



56 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

1. Not to destroy lite nor to cause its de- 

struction. 

2. Not to steal. 

3. Not to commit adultery. 

4. Not to tell lies. 

5. Not to indulge in intoxicating drinks; 

or the Buddhist warning against the 
ten sins; three of the body — ^taking 
life, theft, adultery; four of speech — 
lying, slander, abuse, and vain con- 
versation; three of the mind — covet- 
ousness, malice, and scepticism. 
It saw also that Confucian writings em- 
braced its fifty precepts ^ detailed under the 
five different secular relationships of 

1. Parents and children. 

2. Pupils and teachers. 

3. Husbands and wives. 

4. Friends and companions. 

5. Masters and servants. 

Our early Buddhists therefore did not see 
why they should try to suppress the existing 
Confucian moral code and supplant it with 
their own which breathed the same spirit, 

* Cp. Rhys Davids' Buddhism, p. 144. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 57 

only because it had not grown on Indian 
soil. 

Thus encouraged by the now influential 
advocates of the teaching of Buddha, them- 
selves admirers of the Chinese learning, Con- 
fucianism began with renewed vigour to 
exercise a great influence on the future of 
the Japanese. This took place during the 
seventh century, when the reorganisation of 
the Japanese government after the model of 
that of the Celestial Empire made our educa- 
tional system quite Chinese. In addition to 
a university, there were many provincial 
schools where candidates for the government 
service were instructed. Medicine, mathe- 
matics, including astronomy and law, taught 
through Chinese books, along with the all- 
important teaching in the Confucian ethics 
and in Chinese literature generally, were the 
branches of study cultivated under the guid- 
ance of professors whose calling had become 
hereditary among a certain number of 
learned families. In the course of the next 
two centuries we see several private institu- 
tions founded by great nobles of the court, 
with an endowment in land for their support. 



58 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

The native system of writing which had 
gradually emerged out of the phonetic use of 
Chinese ideographs made it possible for Jap- 
anese thought, hitherto expressed only in an 
uncongenial foreign garb, to appear in purely 
Japanese attire. Thus we find the dawn of 
Japanese civilisation appearing at the begin- 
ning of the tenth century after Christ. The 
air was replete with the Buddhist thought of 
after-life and the Confucian ideas of broad- 
day morality. The sonorous reading of the 
Book of Filial Piety was heard all over the 
country, echoing with the loud recital of the 
Myoho-renge-kyo (or Saddharma Piindarika 
Sutra). 

During the dark and dreary Middle Ages 
which followed this golden period, and which 
were brought about by the degeneration of 
the ruling nobles and by the gradually rising 
power of the military class, Chinese learning 
fled to the protecting hands of Buddhist 
priests; and in its quiet refuge within the 
monastery walls it continued to breathe its 
humble existence, until it found r.t the be- 
ginning of the sixteenth century a powerful 
patron in the great founder of the Tokugawa 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 59 

Shogunate. The education of the common 
people, too, seems to have been kept up by 
the monks — a fact still preserved in the word 
tera-koya, * church seminary/ a term used, 
until forty years ago, to express the tiny pri- 
vate schools for children. It must be remem- 
bered that the education thus given was al- 
ways of an exclusively secular character, bas- 
ing itself on the Confucian morals. 

Before passing on to the consideration of 
Laoism, let me say something about the so- 
called orthodox form of the teaching of Con- 
fucius, which is one of the latest develop- 
ments of that doctrine. Orthodox Confu- 
cianism, as represented by the famous Chi- 
nese philosopher and commentator of the 
Confucian canon, Chu-Hsi (i 130-1200), 
found its admirer in a Japanese scholar, Fu- 
ji war a-no-Seigwa (1560-1619), who in his 
youth had joined the priesthood, which how- 
ever he afterwards renounced. He gave lec- 
tures on the Chinese classics at Kyoto. He 
was held in great esteem by Tokugawa 
lyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa line 
of Shoguns, who embraced the Chinese sys- 
tem of ethics as preached by Chu-Hsi. Dur- 



6o THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

ing the two hundred and fifty years of the 
Tokugawa rule, this system, under the 
hereditary direction of the descendants of 
Hayashi Kazan (1583-1657), one of the 
most distinguished disciples of Seigwa, was 
recognised as the established doctrine. 

According to the somewhat hazy ideas of 
Chu-Hsi's philosophy, which I ask your per- 
mission to sketch here on account of the high 
public esteem in which we have held them 
for the last three centuries, the ultimate basis 
of the universe is Infinity, or Tai Kieh, 
which, though containing within itself all the 
germs of all forms of existence and excel- 
lence, is utterly void of form or sensible qual- 
ities. It consists of two qualities, li and chij 
which may be roughly rendered into * force- 
element ' and ' matter-element.' These are 
self-existences, are present in all things, and 
are found in their formation. The * force- 
element,' or li, we are told, is the perfection 
of heavenly virtue. It is in inanimate 
things as well as in man and other animate 
beings, and pervades all space. The ' matter- 
element,' or chi, is endowed with the male 
and the female principles, or positive and 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 6i 

negative polarities, as we might call them. 
It is, moreover, characterised by the five con- 
stituent qualities of wood, Hre, earth, metal, 
and water. Hence its other name, Wu- 
hsieng, or * Five Qualities.' 

Things and animals, except human beings, 
get only portions of the force-element, but 
man receives it in full, and this becomes in 
his person sing, or real human nature. He 
has thus within him the perfect mirror of the 
heavenly virtue and complete power of un- 
derstanding. There is no difference in this 
respect between a sage and an ordinary man. 
To both the force-element is uniformly given. 
But the matter-element, from which is de- 
rived his form and material existence, and 
which constitutes the basis of his mental dis- 
position, is different in quality in different 
men. 

Man's real nature, or sing, although orig- 
inally perfect, becomes affected on entering 
into him, or is modified by his mental dis- 
position, which differs according to the dif- 
ferent state of the matter-element. Thus a 
second nature is formed out of the original. 
It is through this second and tainted human 



62 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

nature that man acts well or ill. When a 
man does evil, that is the result of his mental 
disposition covering or interfering with his 
original perfect nature. Wipe this vapour of 
corrupted thought from the surface of your 
mental mirror and it will shine out as bright- 
ly as if it had never been covered by a tem- 
porary mist.^ 

Synoptically expressed and applied to the 
microcosm Chu-Hsi's system will be as fol- 
lows : — ' 

Man. 

''FoTce-'Element=:Original Nature of Man. 



Infinity- 



■ — y 

Different Human Characters. 

A 

f Male-Principle "1 Wood-quality. 

Fire- 
Matter-Elementi ^Earth- „ 

Metal- „ 
LFemale-PrincipleJ Water- ,, 



Dispositions latent in Matter. 



Such is, in its outline, Chu-Hsi's view, 
which received the sanction of the ruling 
Tokugawa family. But it was not without 
its opponents in Japan as well as in China. 
Already in his own time, Lu-Shang-Shan 
(b. 1 140 A.D.) maintained, in opposition to 

^ Cp. T. Haga's Note on Japanese Schools of 
Philosophy. T. A. S. J.^ vol. xx. pt. i. p. 134. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 63 

the high-sounding erudition of Chu-Hsi, that 
the purification of the heart was the first and 
main point of study.^ The same protest was 
more systematically urged against it by his 
great follower, Wang Yang-ming (1472- 
1528 A.D.), who found warm and able ad- 
mirers in Japan in such scholars as Nakae 
Toju (1603-1678), Kumazawa Hanzan 
(161 9- 1 691), and Oshio Chusai (1794- 
1837). Among other great opponents 
of the orthodox philosophy, such names as 
Ito Jinsai (1625-1706) and his son Togai 
(1670- 1 736), Kaibara Ekken (1630- 17 14), 
Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728), are to be men- 
tioned= These scholars, getting their funda- 
mental ideas from other Chinese thinkers, 
and eager to remain faithful to the true spirit 
of Confucianism itself, pointed out many in- 
consistencies in Chu-Hsi's theory, and were 
of the opinion that more real good was to 
be achieved in proceeding straight to action 
under the guidance of conscience which was 
heaven and all, than in indulging in idle talk 
about the subtlety of human nature. 

The philosophy of Chu-Hsi, although he 
^ Faber's Doctrines of Confucius, p. z^. 



64 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

calls himself the true exponent of Confucian- 
ism, is not at all Confucian. It is greatly in- 
debted to Buddhism and Taoism, or better, 
Laoism, that is to say, to the philosophy orig- 
inated by Lao-tze (b. 604 B.C.), one of the 
greatest thinkers that China has ever pro- 
duced. Since Laoism, through the wonder- 
ful Tao-ten-king, a small book by Lao-tze 
himself, but especially through Chwang-tze, 
a work in ten books by his famous follower 
Chwang-chow, has exercised considerable in- 
fluence on our thought for twelve centuries, 
a word about it may not be out of place be- 
fore we go on to consider the doctrine of 
Shakya-muni. 

In Lao-tze we find the perfect opposite of 
Confucius, both in the turn of his mind and 
in his views and methods of saving the 
world. Lao-tze endeavoured to reform hu- 
manity by warning them to cast off all 
human artifice and to return to nature. This 
may be taken as the whole tenor of his doc- 
trine : Do not try to do anything with your 
petty will, because it is the way to hinder 
and spoil the spontaneous growth of the true 
virtue that permeates the universe. To fol- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 65 

low Nature's dictates, while helping it to de- 
velop itself, is the very course sanctioned and 
followed by all the sages worthy of the name. 
Make away with your * Ego ' and learn to 
value simplicity and humiliation ; for in total 
^ altruism ' exists the completion of self, and 
in humble contentment and yielding pliancy 
are to be found real grandeur and true 
strength. Under the title * Dimming Radi- 
ance ' he says : ^ — 

* Heaven endures and earth is lasting. And why- 
can heaven and earth endure and be lasting? Be- 
cause they do not live for themselves. On that ac- 
count can they endure. 

' Therefore the True Man puts his person behind 
and his person comes to the front. He surrenders 
his person and his person is preserved. Is it not 
because he seeks not his own? For that reason he 
accomplishes his own.' 

Again we hear him ' Discoursing on Vir- 
tue ' :— 

* Superior virtue is non-virtue. Therefore it has 
virtue. Inferior virtue never loses sight of virtue. 
Therefore it has no virtue, Superior virtue is non- 
assertive and without pretension. Inferior virtue 
asserts and makes pretensions.' 



^ Cp. Dr. P. Carus's Lao-tze Tao-teh-king. 

3S 



66 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

He talks about * Returning to Simplicity ' : 

* Quit the so-called saintliness ; leave the so-called 
wisdom alone; and the people's gain will be in- 
creased by a hundredfold. 

'Abandon the so-called mercy; put away the so- 
called righteousness; and the people will return to 
filial devotion and paternal love. 

'Abandon your scheming; put away your devices; 
and thieves and robbers will no longer exist.' 

Such is the general purport of the doctrine 
expounded by Lao-tze. It is well to remem- 
ber that this doctrine, which we may call for 
distinction's sake Laoism, has intrinsically 
very little to do with that form of belief now 
so prevalent among the Chinese, and which 
is known under the name of Taoism. Al- 
though this name itself is derived from Lao- 
tze's own word Tao, meaning Reason or 
True Path, and although the followers of 
Taoism see in the great philosopher its first 
revealer, it is in all probability nothing more 
than a new aspect and new appellation as- 
sumed by that aboriginal Chinese cult which 
was based on nature- and ancestor-worship. 
Ever since their appearance in history the 
Chinese have had their belief in Shang-ti, 
in spirits, and in natural agencies. This cult 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT (,j 

found, at an early date, in the mystic in- 
terpretation and solution of life as expressed 
by Lao-tze and his followers, the means of 
fresh development. The philosophical ideas 
of these thinkers were not properly under- 
stood, and words and phrases mostly meta- 
phorical were construed in such a manner 
that they came to mean something quite dif- 
ferent from what the original writers wished 
to suggest. Such an idea, for instance, as the 
deathlessness of a True Man by virtue of his 
incorporation with the grand Truth Tao that 
pervades Heaven and Earth, breathing in 
the eternity of the universe, was easily mis- 
interpreted in a very matter-of-fact manner, 
e.g., anybody who realised Tao could then 
enjoy the much-wished-for freedom from 
actual death. You see how easy it is for an 
ordinary mind to pass from one to the other 
when it hears Chwang-tze say : — 

' Fire cannot burn him who is perfect in virtue, 
nor water drown him ; neither cold nor heat can 
affect him injuriously; neither bird nor beast can 
hurt him.' ^ 

Or again : — 
* Though heaven and earth were to be overturned 

^ Cp. Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxix. 



68 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

and fall, they would occasion him no loss. His 
judgment is fixed on that in which there is no ele- 
ment of falsehood, and while other things change, 
he changes not.'^ 

We want no great flight of imagination 
therefore to follow the traces of development 
of the present form of Taoism with its oc- 
cult aspects. The eternity attributed to a 
True Man in its Laoist sense begot the idea 
of a deathless man in flesh and blood en- 
dowed with all kinds of supernatural powers. 
This in turn produced the notion that these 
superhuman beings knew some secret means 
to preserve their life and could work other 
wonders. Herbalism, alchemy, geomancy, 
and other magic arts owe their origin to this 
fountain-head of primitive superstition. 

There is little room for reasonable doubt 
that in this way Taoism, although the name 
itself was of later development, has been in 
its main features the religion of China par 
excellence from the very dawn of its history. 
It has from the beginning found a con- 
genial soil in the heart of the Chinese people, 
who still continue to embrace the cult with 

Gp. Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxix. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 69 

great enthusiasm, and in whose helpless 
credulity the Taoist priests of to-day, bor- 
rowing much help from the occult sides of 
Buddhism and Hinduism, still find an easy 
prey for their necromantic arts. 

Not so with Laoism. One may well won- 
der how such an uncongenial doctrine ever 
came to spring from the soil of materialistic 
China. Some suggest that Lao-tze was a 
Brahman, and not a Chinese at all. Another 
explanation of this anomaly is to be found 
in the attempted division of the whole Chi- 
nese civilisation into two geographically dis- 
tinct groups, the rigid Northern and the 
more romantic Southern types : Laoism be- 
longing to the latter, while Confucianism be- 
longs to the former. In any case, the re- 
semblance in many respects between the doc- 
trine introduced by Lao-tze and the higher 
form of Buddhism is very striking. Let me 
take this opportunity of saying something 
about the religion of Shakya-muni, which 
has occupied our mind and heart for the past 
fifteen centuries. 

But, first of all, let me say that I am not 
unaware of the absurdity of trying to give 



70 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

you anything like a fair idea of a many-sided 
and extremely complicated system of human 
belief such as Buddhism in the short space 
which is at my disposal. Very far from it. 
Even a brief summary of its main features 
would take an able speaker at least a couple 
of hours. So I humbly confine myself to 
giving you some hints on the belief, about 
which most of you, I presume, have already 
had occasion to hear something, the religion 
which took its origin among the people who 
claim their descent from the same Aryan 
stock to which you yourselves belong. Those 
who would care to read about it will find an 
excellent supply of knowledge in two little 
books called Buddhism and Buddhism in 
China, written respectively by Dr. Rhys 
Davids and the late Rev. S. Beal, not to men- 
tion the late Sir Monier Williams' standard 
work. A perusal of the Rev. A. Lloyd's 
paper read before the Asiatic Society of 
Japan in 1894, entitled * Developments of 
Japanese Buddhism,' is very desirable. 
There are also two chapters devoted to this 
doctrine in Lafcadio Hearn's last work, 
Japan. This enumeration might almost ex- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 71 

empt me from making any attempt to de- 
scribe it myself. 

Buddhism has, to begin with, two distinct 
forms, philosophical and popular, which may 
practically be taken as two different religions. 
Philosophical Buddhism — or at least the 
truest form of it — is a system based upon the 
recognition of the utter impermanency of 
the phenomenal world in all its forms and 
states. It believes in no God or gods what- 
ever as a personal motive power. The only 
thing eternal is matter, or essence of matter, 
with the Karma, or Law of cause and effect, 
dwelling incorporated in it. Through the 
never-ceasing working of this law innumer- 
able forms of existence develop, which, not- 
withstanding the appearance of stability they 
temporarily assume, are, in consequence of 
the action and reaction of the very law to 
which they owe their existence, constantly 
subject to everlasting changes. Constancy is 
nowhere to be found in this universe of 
phenomena. It is therefore an act of un- 
speakable ignorance on the part of human 
beings, themselves a product of the immuta- 
ble Karma^ to attach a constant value to this 



72 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

dreamy world and allow themselves to lose 
their mental harmony in the quest of shad- 
owy desires and of their shadowy satisfac- 
tion, thus plunging themselves into the 
boundless sea of misery. True salvation is 
to be sought in the complete negation of ego- 
ism and in the unconditional absorption of 
ourselves in the fundamental law of the uni- 
verse. Shakya-muni was no more than one 
of a series of teachers whose mission it is to 
show us how to get rid of our fatal ignorance 
of this grand truth, an ignorance which is at 
the root of all the discontent and misery of 
our selfish existence. 

Very different from this is the aspect as- 
sumed by the popular form of Buddhism. 
This is a system built up on the blind worship 
of personified psychic phenomena, originally 
meant merely as convenient symbols for their 
better contemplation, and in the transforma- 
tion of the human teachers of truth into so 
many personal gods. This is the reason why 
Buddhism, so essentially atheistic, has come 
to be regarded by the ordinary Christian 
mind as polytheism, or as a degraded form 
of idolatry. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT Ji 

Now, in all the many sects of Buddhism 
which, have been planted in the soil of Japan 
since the middle of the seventh century, some 
of which soon withered, while others took 
deep root and grew new branches, these two 
phases have always been recognised and util- 
ised in their proper sphere as means of salva- 
tion. For the populace there was the lower 
Buddhism, while the more elevated classes 
found satisfaction in the higher form and 
in an explanation of that True Path which 
lies hidden beneath the complicated symbolic 
system. 

Of the sects which have exercised great 
influence on Japanese mentality, the follow- 
ing are specially to be mentioned : the Ten- 
dai, the Shingon, the Zen, the Hokke, and 
the Jodo, with its offspring the Ikko sect. 
Each of these chose its own means of reach- 
ing enlightenment from among those indi- 
cated by Shakya-muni, but did not on that 
account entirely reject the means of salvation 
preferred by the others. Some, give long 
lists of categories and antitheses, and seek 
to define the truth with a more than Aristote- 
lian precision of detail, while others think 



74 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

it advisable to realise it by dint of faith alone. 
But among these means of salvation the 
practice advocated by the Zen sect is worthy 
of special consideration in this place, as it 
has exercised great influence in the formation 
of the Japanese spirit. Zen means * abstrac- 
tion/ standing for the Sanskrit Dhyana. It 
is one of the six means of arriving at Nir- 
vana, namely, (i) charity; (2) morahty; 
(3) patience; (4) energy; (5) contempla- 
tion; and (6) wisdom. This practice, which 
dates from a time anterior to Shakya him- 
self, consists of an * abstract contemplation,' 
intended to destroy all attachment to exist- 
ence in thought and wish. From the earliest 
time Buddhists taught four different degrees 
of abstract contemplation by which the mind 
frees itself from all subjective and objective 
trammels, until it reaches a state of absolute 
indifference or self-annihilation of thought, 
perception, and will.^ 

You might perhaps wonder how a method 
so utterly unpractical and speculative as that 
of trying to arrive at final enlightenment by 

*E. J. Eitel's Handbook of Chinese Buddhism, 
p. 49. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 75 

pure contemplation could ever have talcen 
root in Japan, among a people who, generally- 
speaking, have never troubled themselves 
much about things apart from their actual 
and immediate use. An explanation of this 
is not far to seek. Eisai, the founder of the 
Rinzai school, the branch of the Contempla- 
tive sect first established on our soil, came 
back to Japan from his second visit to China 
in 1 192 A.D.^ This was the time when the 
short-lived rule of the Minamoto clan ( 1 186- 
12 19) was nearing the end of its real 
supremacy. Only fifteen years before that 
the world had seen the downfall of another 
mighty clan. The battle of Dannoura put 
an end to the Heike ascendancy after an in- 
cessant series of desperate battles extending 
over a century, giving our soldier-like qual- 
ities enough occasion for an excellent school- 
ing. The whole country during this period 
had been under the raging sway of Mars, 
who swept with his fiery breath the blossoms 
of human prosperity, and the people high and 

^ Four years later the first temple of this school 
was opened in Hakata under the patronship of the 
Emperor Gotoba. 



7(> THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

low were obliged to recognise the folly ot 
clinging to shadowy desires and to learn the 
urgent necessity for facing every emergency 
with something akin to indifference. To pass 
from glowing life into the cold grasp of 
death with a smile, to meet the hardest de- 
crees of fate with the resolute calm of stoic 
fortitude, was the quality demanded of every 
man and woman in that stormy age. In the 
meanwhile, different military clans had been 
forming themselves in different parts of 
Japan and preparing to wage an endless 
series of furious battles against one another. 
In half a century too came the one solitary 
invasion of our whole history when a foreign 
power dared to threaten us with destruction. 
The mighty Kublei, grandson of the great 
Genghis Khan, haughty with his resistless 
army, whose devastating intrepidity taught 
even Europe to tremble at the mention of his 
name, despatched an embassy to the Japanese 
court to demand the subjection of the coun- 
try. The message was referred to Kama- 
kura, then the seat of the Ho jo regency, and 
was of course indignantly dismissed. En- 
raged at this, Kublei equipped a large num- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 77 

ber of vessels with the choicest soldiers 
China could furnish. The invading force 
was successful at first, and committed mas- 
sacres in Iki and Tsushima, islands lying be- 
tween Corea and Japan. The position was 
menacing; even the steel nerves of the 
trained Samurai felt that strange thrill a 
patriot knows. Shinto priests and Buddhist 
monks were equally busy at their prayers. 
A new embassy came from the threatening 
Mongol leader. The imperious ambassadors 
were taken to Kamakura, to be put to death 
as an unmistakable sign of contemptuous re- 
fusal. A tremendous Chinese fleet gathered 
in the boisterous bay of Genkai in the sum- 
mer of 1 28 1. At last the evening came with 
the ominous glow on the horizon that fore- 
tells an approaching storm. It was the plan 
of the conquering army victoriously to land 
the next morning on the holy soil of Kyu- 
shu. But during this critical night a fearful 
typhoon, known to this day as the * Divine 
Storm,' arose, breaking the jet-black sky 
with its tremendous roar of thunder and 
bathing the glittering armour of our soldiers 
guarding the coastline in white flashes of 



7% THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

dazzling light. The very heaven and eartli 
shook before the mighty anger of nature. 
The result was that the dawn of the next 
morning saw the whole fleet of the proud 
Yuan, that had darkened the water for miles, 
swept completely away into the bottomless 
sea of Genkai, to the great relief of the hor- 
ror-stricken populace, and to the unspeakable 
disappointment of our determined soldiers. 
Out of the hundred thousand warriors who 
manned the invading ships, only three are re- 
corded to have survived the destruction to 
tell the dismal tale to their crestfallen great 
Khan! 

Then after a short interval of a score of 
peaceful years, Japan was plunged again into 
another series of internal disturbances, from 
which she can hardly be said to have emerged 
until the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, when order and rest were brought back 
by the able hand of Tokugawa lyeyasu. 
During all these troublous days, the original 
Contemplative sect, paralleled soon after its 
establishment in Japan by a new school called 
Soto, as it was again supplemented by an- 
other, the Obaku school, five centuries after- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 79 

wards, found ample material to propagate its 
special method of enlightenment. This sect, 
which drew its patrons from the ruling 
classes of Japan, was unanimously looked up 
to as best calculated to impart the secret 
power of perfect self-control and undisturb- 
able peace of mind. It must be remembered 
that the ultimate riddance in the Buddhist 
sense, the entrance into cold Nirvana, was 
not what our practical mind wanted to real- 
ise. It was the stoic indifference, enabling 
man to meet after a moment's thought, or 
almost instinctively, any hardships that 
human life might impose, that had brought 
about its otherwise strange popularity. 

Another charm it offered to the people of 
the illiterate Middle Ages, when they had to 
attend to other things than a leisurely pur- 
suit of literature, was its systematic neglect 
of book-learning. Truth was to be directly 
read from heart to heart. The intervention 
of words and writing was regarded as a 
hindrance to its true understanding. A rudi- 
mentary symbolism expressed by gestures 
was all that a Zen priest really relied upon 
for the communication of the doctrine. 



8o THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

Everybody with a heart to feel and a mind 
to understand needed nothing- further to be- 
gin and finish his quest of the desired free- 
dom from hfe's everlasting torments. 

The self-control that enables us not to be- 
tray our inner feeling through a change in 
our expression, the measured steps with 
which we are taught to walk into the hideous 
jaws of death — in short, all those qualities 
which make a present Japanese of truly Jap- 
anese type look strange, if not queer, to your 
eyes, are in a most marked degree a product 
of that direct or indirect influence on our 
past mentality which was exercised by the 
Buddhist doctrine of Dhyana taught by the 
Zen priests. 

Another benefit which the Zen sect con- 
ferred on us is the healthy influence it exer- 
cised on our taste. The love of nature and 
the desire of purity that we had shown from 
the earliest days of our history, took, under 
the leading idea of the Contemplative sect 
a new development, and began to show that 
serene dislike of loudness of form and colour. 
That apparent simplicity with a fulness of 
meaning behind it, like a Dhyana symbol it- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 8i 

self, which we find so pervadingly manifest- 
ed in our works of art, especially in those of 
the Ashikaga period (1400-1600 a.d.), is 
certainly to be counted among the most valu- 
able results which the Zen doctrine quickened 
us to produce. 

In short, so far-reaching is the influence 
of the Contemplative sect on the formation 
of the Japanese spirit as you find it at pres- 
ent, that an adequate interpretation of its 
manifestations would be out of the question 
unless based on a careful study of this branch 
of Buddhism. So long as the Zen sect is not 
duly considered, the whole set of phenomena 
peculiar to Japan — from the all-pervading 
laconism to the hara-kiri — will remain a 
sealed book. 

This fact is my excuse for having detained 
you for so long on the subject. 

I now pass on to the consideration of our 
own native cult. 

Shinto, or the * Path of the Gods,' is the 
name by which we distinguish the body of 
our national belief from Buddhism, Chris- 
tianity, or any other form of religion. It is 
remarkable that this appellation, like Nippon 



S2 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

(which corresponds to your word Japan), 
is no purely Japanese term. Buddhism is 
called Buppo (from Biitsu, Buddha, and hd^ 
doctrine) or Bukkyo {kyo, teaching) ; Con- 
fucianism is known as Jukyo {Ju, literati) ; 
and both terms are taken from the Chinese. 
In keeping with these we have Shinto {Shin, 
deity, and to, way). This state of things in 
some measure explains the rather unstable 
condition in which Buddhism on its first ar- 
rival found our national cult. It has ever 
since remained in its main aspects nothing 
more than a form of ancestor-worship based 
on the central belief in the divine origin of 
the imperial line. A systematised creed it 
never was and has never become, even if we 
take into consideration the attempts at its 
consolidation made by such scholars as 
Yamazaki-Ansai (1618-1682), who in the 
middle of the seventeenth century tried to 
formalise it in accordance with Chu-Hsi^s 
philosophy, or, later still, by such eager re- 
vivalists as Hirata-Atsutane (1776- 1843), 
etc. At the time when Shintoism had to 
meet its mighty foe from India, its whole 
mechanism was very simple. It consisted in 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 83 

a number of primitive rites, such as the re- 
cital of the liturgy, the offering of eatables to 
the departed spirits of deified ancestors, pa- 
triarchal, tribal, or national. This naive cult 
was as innocent of the cunning ideas and 
subtle formalisms of the rival creed as its 
shrines were free from the decorations and 
equipments of an Indian temple. So, al- 
though at the start Buddhism met with some 
obstinate resistance at the hand of the Shin- 
toists, who attributed the visitations of 
pestilence that followed the introduction of 
the foreign belief to the anger of the native 
gods, its superiority in organisation soon 
overcame these difficulties; especially from 
the time when the great Buddhist priest 
Kukai (774-835 A.D.) hit upon the ingenious 
but mischievous idea of solving the dilemma 
by the establishment of what is generally 
known in our history as Ryobu-Shinto, or 
double-faced Shinto. According to this doc- 
trine., a Shinto god was to be regarded as an 
incarnation of a corresponding Indian deity, 
who made his appearance in Japan through 
metamorphosis for Japan^s better salvation 
— ^ doctrine which is no more than a clever 



84 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

application of the notion known in India as 
Nirmanakaya. This incarnation theory- 
opened a new era in the history of the ex- 
pansion of Buddhism in Japan, extending 
over a period of eleven centuries, during 
which Shintoism was placed in a very awk- 
ward position. It was at last restored to its 
original purity at the beginning of the pres- 
ent Meiji period, and that only after a cen- 
tury of determined endeavour on the part of 
native Shintoist scholars. 

From these words you might perhaps con- 
clude that Buddhism succeeded in supplant- 
ing the native cult, at least for more than a 
thousand years. But, strange to say, if we 
judge the case not by outward appearances, 
but by the religious conviction that lurks in 
the depth of the heart, we cannot but recog- 
nise the undeniable fact that no real conver- 
sion has ever been achieved during the past 
eleven centuries by the doctrine of Buddha. 
Our actual self, notwithstanding the differ- 
ent clothes we have put on^ has ever re- 
mained true in its spirit to our native cult. 
Speaking generally, we are still Shintoists to 
this day — Buddhists, Christians, and all — so 



THE JAPANESE SPIRITi 85 

long as we are born Japanese. This might 
sound to you somewhat paradoxical. Here 
is the explanation : — 

For an average Japanese mind in present 
Japan, thanks to the ancestor-worship prac- 
tised consciously or unconsciously from time 
immemorial, it is not altogether easy to imag- 
ine the spirit of the deceased, if it believes in 
one at all, to be something different and dis- 
tant from our actual living self. The de- 
parted, although invisible, are thought to be 
leading their ethereal life in the same world 
in much the same state as that to which they 
had been accustomed while on earth. Like 
the little child so touchingly described by 
Wordsworth, we cannot see why we should 
not count the so-called dead still among the 
existing. The difference between the two is 
that of tangibility or vi-sibility, but nothing 
more. 

The rcdson d'etre of this illusive notion 
is, of course, not far to seek. Any book on 
anthropology or ethnology would tell you 
how sleep, trance, dream, hallucination, re- 
flection in still water, etc., help to build up 
the spirit-world in the untaught mind of 



86 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

primitive man. Yet it must be remembered 
that these origins have led to something far 
higher, to something of real value to our 
nation, and to something which is a moral 
force in our daily lives that may well be com- 
pared to what is efficacious in other creeds. 
Notice the fact that Buddhism from the mo- 
ment of its introduction in. the sixth century 
after Christ to this very day has on the whole 
remained the religion, so to say, of night and 
gloomy deaths while Shintoism has always 
retained its firm hold on the popular mind as 
the cult, if I might so express it, of daylight 
and the living dead. From the very dawn of 
our history we read of patriarchs, chieftains, 
and national" heroes deified and worshipped 
as so many guardian spirits of families, of 
clans, or of the country. Nor has this proc- 
ess of deification come to an end yet, even in 
this age of airship and submarine boat. We 
continue to erect shrines to men of merit. 
This may look very strange to you, but is not 
your poet Swinburne right when he sings — ■ 

'Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own 

lays down, 
lie, dying so, lives/ 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 87 

Might not these Hnes explain, when duly ex- 
tended, the subtle feeling that lurks behind 
our apparently incomprehensible custom of 
speaking with the departed over the altar? 
The present deification, is, like your custom 
of erecting monuments to men of merit, a 
way of making the best part of a man'§ ca- 
reer legible to the coming generations. The 
numberless shrines you now find scattered 
all over Japan are only so many chapters 
written in unmistakable characters of the les- 
sons our beloved and revered heroes and 
good men have left us for our edification and 
amelioration. It is in the sunny space with- 
in the simple railing of these Shinto shrineSj 
where the smiling presence of the patron 
spirit of a deified forefather or a great man 
is so clearly felt, that our childhood has 
played for tens of centuries its games of in- 
nocent joy. Monthly and yearly festivals 
are observed within the divine enclosure of a 
guardian god, when a whole community 
under his protection let themselves go in 
good-natured laughter and gleeful mirth be- 
fore the favouring eyes of their divine 
patron. How dififerent is this jovial feeling* 



88 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

from that gloomy sensation with which we 
approach a Buddhist temple, recalling death 
and the misery of life from every corner of 
its mysterious interior. Such seriousness has 
never been congenial to the gay Japanese 
mind with its strong love of openness and 
light. Until death stares us right in the face, 
we do not care to be religious in the ordinary 
sense of the term. True, we say and think 
that we believe in death, but all the while this 
so-called death is nothing else than a new 
life in this present world of ours led in a 
supernatural way. For instance, when the 
father of a Japanese family begins a journey 
of any length, the raised part of his room will 
be made sacred to his memory during his 
temporary absence; his family will gather in 
front of it and think of him, expressing their 
devotion and love in words and gifts in kind. 
In the hundreds of thousands of families that 
have some one or other of their members 
fighting for the nation in this dreadful war 
with Russia, there will not be even one soli- 
tary house where the mother, wife, or sister 
is not practising this simple rite of endear- 
ment for the beloved and absent member of 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 89 

the family. And if he die on the field, the 
mental attitude of the poor bereaved towards 
the never-returning does not show any sub- 
stantial difference. The temporarily depart- 
ed will now be regarded as the forever de- 
parted, but not as lost or passed away. His 
essential self is ever present, only not visible. 
Daily offerings and salutations continue in 
exactly the same way as when he was absent 
for a time. Even in the mind of the modern 
Japanese with its extremely agnostic ten- 
dencies, there is still one corner sacred 
to this inherited feeling. You could 
sooner convince an ordinary European 
of the non-existence of a personal God. 
When it gets dusk every bird knows 
whither to wing its way home. Even 
so with us all when the night of Death 
spreads its dark folds over our mortal 
mind! 

But ask a modern Japanese of ordinary 
education in the broad daylight of life, if he 
believes in a God in the Christian sense; or in 
Buddha as the creator; or in the Shinto 
deities ; or else in any other personal agency 
or agencies, as originating and presiding 



90 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

over the universe; and you would imme- 
diately get an answer in the negative in 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Do you 
ask why? First, because our school educa- 
tion throughout its whole course has, ever 
since its re-establishment thirty-five years 
ago, been altogether free from any teaching 
of a denominational nature. The ethical 
foundations necessary for the building up of 
character are imparted through an adequate 
commentary on the moral sayings and 
maxims derived mostly from Chinese 
classics. Secondly, because the little knowl- 
edge about natural science which we obtain 
at school seems to make it impossible to 
anchor our rational selves on anything other 
than an impersonal law. Thirdly, because 
we do not see any convincing reason why 
morals should be based on the teaching of a 
special denomination, in face of the fact that 
we can be upright and brave without the help 
of a creed with a God or deities at its other 
end. So, for the average mind of the edu- 
cated Japanese something like modern scien- 
tific agnosticism, with a strong tendency to- 
wards the materialistic monism of recent 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 91 

times, is just what pleases and satisfies it 
most. 

If not so definitely thought out, and if ex- 
pressed with much less learned terminology, 
the thought among our educated classes as 
regards supernatural agencies has during the 
past three centuries been much the same. 
The Confucian warning against meddling 
with things supernatural, the atheistic views 
and hermit-like conduct of the adherents of 
Laoism, and the highe«r Buddhism, all con- 
tributed towards the consolidation of this 
mental attitude with a conscious or uncon- 
scious belief in the existing spirit-world. Ex- 
cept for the philosophy which they knew how 
to utilise for their practical purposes, the 
educated felt no charm in religion. The 
lower form of Buddhism with its pantheon 
has been held as something only for the aged 
and the weak. For the execution of the 
religious rites, at funerals or on other occa- 
sions (except in the rare instances when 
some families for a special reason of their 
own preferred the Shintoist form), we have 
unanimously drawn on the Buddhist priest- 
hood, just in the same way as you go to 



92 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

your family doctor or attorney in case of a 
bodily or legal complication, knowing well 
that religion as we have understood it is 
something as much outside the pale of the 
layman as medicine and law. 

For the proper conduct of our daily life as 
members of society, the body of Confucian 
morality resting on the tripod of loyalty, 
filial piety, and honesty, has been the only 
standard which high and low have alike rec- 
ognised. These ethical ideals, when em- 
braced by that formidable warrior caste who 
played such an important part in feudal 
Japan, form the code of unwritten morality 
known among us as Bushido, which means 
the Path of the Samurai. This last word, 
which has found its way into your language, 
is the substantival derivative from the verb 
samurau (to serve), and, like its English 
counterpart 'knight' (Old English cniht), 
has raised itself from its original sense of a 
retainer (cp. German Knecht) to the mean- 
ing in which it is now used. To be a Sa- 
murai in the true sense of the word has been 
the highest aspiration of a Japanese. Your 
term * gentleman,' when understood in its 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 93 

L>est sense, would convey to you an approxi- 
mate idea if you added a dash of soldier 
blood to it. Rectitude, courage, benevolence, 
politeness, veracity, loyalty, and a predom- 
inating- sense of honour — these are the chief 
colours with which a novelist in the days of 
yore used to paint an ideal Samurai ; and his 
list of desirable qualities was not considered 
complete without a well-developed body and 
an expression of the face that was manly 
but in no way brutal. No special stress was 
at first laid on the cultivation of thinking 
power and book-learning, though they were 
not altogether discouraged; it was thought 
that these accomplishments might develop 
other qualities detrimental to the principal 
character, such as sophistry or pedantry. To 
have good sense enough to keep his name 
honourable, and to act instead of talking clev- 
erly, was the chief ambition of a Samurai. 

But this view gradually became obscured. 
It lost its fearful rigidity in course of time, 
as the world became more and more sure of 
a lasting peace. Literature and music have 
gradually added softening touches to its 
somewhat brusque features. 



94 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

It must, however, be always remembered 
that the keynote of Bushido was from the 
very beginning an indomitable sense of hon- 
our. This was all in all to the mind of the 
Samurai, whose sword at his side reminded 
him at every movement of the importance of 
his good name. The Care with which he 
preserved it reached in some cases to a 
pathetic extreme ; he preferred, for example, 
an instant suicide to a reputation on which 
doubt had been cast, however falsely. The 
very custom of seppuku (better known as 
hara-kiri), a form of suicide not known in 
early Japan,^ is an outcome of this love of an 
unstained name, originating, in my opinion, 
in the metaphorical use of the word hara 
(abdomen), which was the supposed organ 
for the begetting of ideas. In consequence 
of this curious localisation of the thinking 
faculty, the word hara came to denote at the 
same time intention or idea. Therefore, in 
cutting open (kiru) his abdomen, a person 

^ The first mention in books of a similar mode of 
death dates from the latter part of the twelfth cen- 
tury. But it does not seem that the custom became 
universal until a considerably later period. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 95 

whose motives had come to be suspected 
meant to show that his inside was free from 
any trace of ideas not worthy of a Samurai. 
This explanation is, I think, amply sustained 
by the constant use to this very day of the 
word hara in the sense of one's ideas. 

So Bushido, as you will now see, was it- 
self but a manifestation of those same forces 
already at work in the formation of Japanese 
thought, like Buddhism, Confucianism, etc. 
But as it has played a most important part 
in the development of modern Japan, I 
thought it more proper to consider it as an 
independent factor in the history of our 
civilisation. Had it not been for this all- 
daring spirit of Bushido, Japan would never 
have been able to make the gigantic progress 
which she has been achieving in these last 
forty years. As soon as our ports were flung 
open to the reception of Western culture. 
Samurai, now deeply conscious of their new 
mission, took leave of those stern but faithful 
friends, their beloved swords, not without 
much reluctance, even as did Sir Bedivere, in 
order to take up the more peaceful pen, which 
they were determined to wield with the same 



96 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

knightly spirit. It is, in short, Bushido that 
has urged our Japan on for the last three 
centuries, and will continue to urge her on, 
on forever, onward to her ideals of the true, 
the good, and the beautiful. Look to the 
spot where every Japanese sabre and every 
Japanese bayonet is at present pointing wkh 
its icy edge of determined patriotism in the 
dreary fields of Manchuria, or think of the 
intrepid heroes on our men-of-war and our 
torpedo-boats amid blinding snowstorms and 
the glare of hostile searchlights, and your 
eyes will invariably end at the magic Path of 
the Samurai. 

Having thus far followed my enumeration 
of the various factors in the formation of the 
present thought in Japan, some of you might 
perhaps be curious to know what Christianity 
has contributed towards the general stock of 
modern Japanese mentality. 

It must surely have exercised a very 
healthy influence on our mind since its re- 
introduction at the beginning of the present 
Meiji period. Some have indeed gone so far 
as to say that we owe the whole success we 
have up to now achieved in this remarkable 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 97 

war to the holy inspiration we drew from 
the teaching of Jesus Christ. 

I indorse this opinion to its full extent, but 
only if we are to understand by His teaching 
that whole body of truth and love which are 
of the essence of Christianity, and which we 
used in former days to call by other names, 
such as Bushido, Confucianism, etc. But if 
you insist on having it understood in a nar- 
row sectarian sense, with a personal God and 
rigid formalities as its main features, then I 
should say that I cannot agree with you, for 
this Christianity occupies rather an awkward 
place in our Japanese mind, finding itself 
somewhere between Ihe national worship of 
the living dead, and modern agnosticism, or 
scientific monism. In our earlier fishery for 
new knowledge in the Western seas, fish 
other than those fit for our table were 
caught and dressed along with some really 
nourishing ; the result was disastrous, an^ we 
gradually came to learn more caution than at 
first. The Roman Catholics, more enthu- 
siastic than discreet, committed wholesale 
outrages on our harmless ways of faith in the 
early days of the seventeenth century, which 
G 



98 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

did much to leave in bad repute the creed of 
Jesus Christ. And since the prohibition 
against Christianity was removed, many a 
missionary has been so particular about the 
plate in which the truth is served as to make 
us doubt, with reason, if that be the spirit of 
the immortal Teacher. The truth and poetry 
that breathe in your Gospels have been too 
often paraphrased in the senseless prose of 
mere formalism. Otherwise Christianity 
would have rendered us better help in our 
eternal march towards the ideal emancipa- 
tion. 

There remains still one highly important 
thing to be considered as a formative element 
of the Japanese spirit. I mean the landscape 
and the physical aspects of Japan in general. 

It is well known that an intimate connec- 
tion exists between the mind and the natii-re 
which surrounds it. A moment's considera- 
tion of the development of Hellenic sculpture 
and of the Greek climate, or of the Teutonic 
mythology and the physical condition of 
Northern Europe, will bring conviction on 
that point. Is not the effect of the blue sky 
on Italian painting, and the influence of the 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 99 

dusky heaven on the pictorial art of the 
Netherlands, clearly traceable in the produc- 
tions of the old masters ? A study of Lon- 
don psychology at the present moment will 
never be complete without special chapters 
on your open spaces and your fogs. 

In order to convey anything like an ade- 
quate idea of the physical aspects of Japan 
from the geographical and meteorological 
points of view, it would be necessary to fur- 
nish a detailed account of the country, with a 
long list of statistical tables and the ample 
help of lantern slides. But on this occasion 
I must be content with naming some of the 
typical features of our surroundings. 

Japan, as you know, is a long and narrow 
series of islands, stretching from frigid 
Kamchatka in the north to half-tropical For- 
mosa in the south. The whole country is 
mountainous, with comparatively little flat 
land, and is perforated with a great number 
of volcanoes, the active ones alone number- 
ing above fifty at present. With this is con- 
nected the annoying frequency of earth- 
quakes, and the agreeable abundance of 
thermal springs — two phenomena that can- 



Lcrfa 



loo THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

not remain without effect on the people's 
character. 

There are two other natural agencies to be 
mentioned in this connection. One is the 
Kuro-shio, or Black Stream, so called on ac- 
count of the deep black colour which the 
ocean current displays in cloudy weather. 
This warm ocean river, having a temperature 
of 2y'' centigrade in summer, begins its 
course in the tropical regions near the 
Philippine Islands, and on reaching the 
southern isles is divided by them into two un- 
equal parts. The greater portion of it skirts 
the Japanese islands on their eastern coast, 
imparting to them that warm and moist at- 
mosphere which is one source of the fertility 
of the soil and the beauty of the vegetation. 
The effect of the Kuro-shio upon the climate 
and productions of the lands along which it 
flows may be fairly compared with that of 
the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, which 
in situation, direction, and volume it resem- 
bles. To this most noticeable cause of the 
climatic condition of the Japanese islands 
must be added another agency closely related 
to it in its effect. Our archipelago lies in the 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT loi 

region of the northeast monsoon, which af- 
fects in a marked degree the chmate of all 
those parts over which the winds blow. Al- 
though the same monsoon blows over the 
eastern countries of the Asiatic continent, the 
insular character of Japan, and the proximity 
of the above-mentioned warm current on 
both sides of the islands^ give to the winds 
which prevail a character they do not possess 
on the continent. 

Although the effect of the chill and frost 
of the northern part of Japan, with its heavy 
snowfall and covered sky, cannot be without 
its depressing influence on human nature in 
that part of the island, this has not played 
any serious role in the formation of the Jap- 
anese character as a whole. It is only at a 
rather recent date that the northern provinces 
began to contribute their share to the general 
progress of the country. This can very 
easily be explained by the gradual advance 
of Japanese civilisation from the southwest 
to the northeast. Until comparatively lately 
the colder region of Japan north of the 37th 
degree of latitude has remained very nearly 
inactive in our history. It is almost ex- 



102 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

cltisively in the more sunny south, extending 
down to the 31st degree, that the main activ- 
ity of the Japanese mind and hand has 
been shown. And the effect is the sunniness 
of character and rather hot temperanient 
v/hich we, as a whole, share in a marked de- 
gree with the southern Europeans, as con- 
trasted with the somewhat gloomy calm and 
deliberation noticed both among oriental and 
occidental northerners. 

Notwithstanding the comparatively high 
amount of. rainfall, the fact remains that as 
a nation we have spent most of our life under 
the serene canopy of blue sky characteristic 
of a volcanic country. Mountains, graceful 
rather than subHme, and fertile plains with 
rich verdure, its beauties changing slowly 
from the white blossoms of spring to the 
crimson leaves of autumn, have afforded us 
miany welcome sights to rest our eyes upon ; 
while the azure stretch of water, broken 
agreeably by scattered isles, washes to-day as 
it did in the days of the gods the white shore, 
rendered conspicuous by the everlasting 
green of the pine trees, which skirts the Land 
of the Rising Sun. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 103 

"^""The winter, though it begins its dreary 
course with a short period of warm days 
known as the Little Spring, is of course not 
without its bleak mornings with cutting 
winds and icy wreaths. But the fact that 
even as far north as Tokyo no elaborate sys- 
tem of warming rooms is at all developed, 
and that the occasional falling of snow is 
hailed even by aged men of letters, 
and still more by the numerous poetasters, 
as a fit occasion for a pedestrian excur- 
sion to some neighbouring localities for a 
better appreciation of the silvery world, 
serves to show how mild the cold is in south 
Japan. 

A people on whom the surrounding nature 
always smiles so indulgently can be little ex- 
pected to be driven to turn their thoughts in 
the direction of their own self, and thus to 
develop such a strong sense of individuality 
as characterises the rigid northerners; nor 
are the nations panting under a scorching 
sun likely to share our friendly feelings to- 
wards nature, for with them Father Sun is 
too rigorous to allow a peaceful enjoyment 
of his works. 



I04 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

All througH the four seasons, whicfi are 
almost too varied even for a Thomson's pen, 
eventful with the constant calls of one after 
another of our flowery visitors — beginning 
with the noble plum that peeps with its 
tiny yellowish-white eyes from under 
the spotless repose of fleecy snow, and end- 
ing in the gay variety of the chrysanthemum 
— we have too many allurements from out- 
side not to leap into the widespread arms of 
Mother Nature and dream away our simple, 
our contented life in her lap. True, there 
also are in Japan many instances of broken 
hearts seeking their final rest under the green 
turf of an untimely grave, or else in the grey 
mantle of the Buddhist monkhood. But in 
them, again, we see the characteristic deter- 
mination and action of a Japanese at work. 
To indulge in Hamlet-like musing, deep in 
the grand doubt and sublime melancholy of 
the never-slumbering question * To be, or not 
to be ? ' is something, so to say, too damp to 
occur in the sunny thought of our open-air 
life. 

If asked to name the most conspicuous of 
those physical phenomena which have exer- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 105 

cised so great an influence on our mind, no 
Japanese will hesitate to mention our most 
beloved Fuji-no-yama. This is the highest 
and the most beautiful of all the great moun- 
tains in the main group of the Japanese 
islands. Gracefully conical in shape, lifting 
its snowciad head against a serene back- 
ground 12,365 feet above the sea, it has from 
the earliest time been the object of unceasing 
admiration for the surrounding thirteen 
provinces, and vv^here it stands out of the 
reach of the naked eye, winged words from 
the poet's lyre, and flying leaves from the 
artist's brush, have carried its never-tiring 
praise to all the nooks and corners of the 
Land of the Gods. 

Here is one of the earliest odes to Fuji- 
yama, contained in a collection of lyrical 
poems called Man-yo-shu, or ' Myriad 
Leaves,' by Prince Moroe (died a.d. 757), 
somewhere in the first half of the eighth 
century : — • 

There on the border, where the land of Kahi 
Doth touch the frontier of Suruga's land, 
A beauteous province stretched on either hand, 
See Fujiyama rear his head on high! 



io6 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

The clouds of heav'n in rev'rent wonder pause, 
Nor may the birds those giddy heights essay, 
Where melt thy snows amid thy fires away, 
Or thy fierce fires lie quench'd beneath thy snows. 



What name might fitly tell, what accents sing. 
Thy awful, godlike grandeur ? 'Tis thy breast 
That holdeth Narusaha's flood at rest, 
Thy side whence Fujikaha's waters spring. 

Great Fujiyama, tow'ring to the sky! 
A treasure art thou giv'n to mortal man, 
A god-protector watching o'er Japan: 
On thee for ever let me feast mine eye ! 



This now extinct volcano, besides inspir- 
ing poetical efforts, has been an inexhaustible 
subject for our pictorial art; it is enough 
to mention the famous sets of colour prints, 
representing the thirty-six or the hundred 
aspects of the farourite mountain, by Hiro- 
shige, Hokusai, etc. The groups of rural 
pilgrims that annually , swarm from all parts 
of Japan during the two hottest months of 
the year to pay their pious visit to the Holy 
Mount Fuji, return to their respective vil- 
lages deeply inspired with a feeling of rever- 
ence and of love for the wonders and beauty 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 107 

of the remarkable dawn they witnessed from 
its summit. 

There is many another towering moun- 
tain with its set of pilgrims, but none can vie 
with Fujiyama for majestic grace. More 
beautiful than sublime, more serene than 
imposing, it has been from time im- 
memorial a silent influence on the Japanese 
character. Who would deny that it has 
reflected in its serenity and grace as seen 
on a bright day all the ideals of the Japanese 
mind? 

Another favourite emblem of our spirit 
is the cherry blossom. The cherry tree, 
which we cultivate, not for its fruit, but for 
the annual tribute of a branchful of its flow- 
ers, has done much, especially in the devel- 
opment of the gay side of our character. Its 
blossoms are void of that sweet depth of 
scent your rose possesses, or the calm repose 
that characterises China's emblematic peony. 
A sunny gaiety and a readiness to scatter 
their heart-shaped petals with a Samurai's 
indifference to death are what make them so 
dear to our simple and determined view of 
life. There is an ode known to every Jap- 



ic8 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

anese by the great Motoori Norinaga (1730- 
1801 A.D.) which runs as follows: — ' 

Shikishima no 

Yamata-gokoro wo 
Hito to ha ba, 

Asahi ni nihofu 

Jamazakura-bana. 

(SKould any one ask me what the spirit of 
Japan is like, I would point to the blossoms 
of the wild cherry tree bathing in the beams 
of the morning sun.) 

These words, laconic as they are, repre- 
sent, in my opinion, the fundamental truth 
about the Japanese mentality — its weak 
places as well as its strength. They give an 
incomparable key to the proper understand- 
ing of the whole people, whose ideal it has 
ever been to live and to die like the cherry 
blossoms, beneath which they have these tens 
of centuries spent their happiest hours every 
spring. 

The mention of a Japanese poem gives me 
an opportunity to say something about Jap- 
anese poetry. Like other early people, our 
forefathers in archaic time liked to express 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 109 

their thoughts in a measured form of lan- 
guage. The whole structure of the tongue 
being naturally melodious, on account of its 
consisting of open syllables with clear and 
sonorous vowels and little of the harsh con- 
sonantal elements in them, the number of 
syllables in a line has been almost the only 
feature that distinguished our poetry from 
ordinary prose composition. The taste for a 
lengthened form of poems had lost ground 
early, and already at the end of the ninth 
century after Christ the epigrammatic form 
exemplified above, consisting of thirty-one 
syllables, established itself as the ordinary 
type of the Japanese odes. 

This form subdivides itself into two parts, 
viz., the upper half containing three lines of 
five, seven, and again five syllables, and the 
lower half consisting of two lines of seven 
syllables each. This simplicity has made it 
impossible to express in it anything more 
than a pithy appeal to our lyrical nature ; epic 
poetry in the strict sense of the word has 
never been developed by us. 

But it must be noticed that it is this sim- 
plicity of form of our poetical expression 



no THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

that has put it within the reach of almost 
everybody. To all of us without distinction 
of class and sex has been accorded the sacred 
pleasure of satisfying and thus developing 
our poetical nature, so long as we had a sub- 
ject to sing and could count syllables up to 
thirty-one. The language resorted to in such 
a composition was at first the same as that in 
use in everyday life. But afterwards as suc- 
ceeding forms of the vernacular gradually 
deviated from the classical type, a special 
grammar along with a special vocabulary 
had to be studied by the would-be poet. This 
was avoided, however, by the development in 
the sixteenth century of a popular and still 
shorter form of ode called Hokku, with much 
less strict regulations about syntax and 
phraseology. This ultra-short variety of 
Japanese poetry, consisting only of seventeen 
syllables, is in form the upper half of the 
regular poem. Here is an example : — 

Asagaho ni 

Tsurube torarete 
Morai-midzu. 

Sketchy as it is, this tells us that the com- 
poser Chiyo, \ having gone to her well one 



:1FHE JAPANESE SPIRIT 1 1 1 

morning to draw water, found that some 
tendrils of the convolvulus had twined them- 
selves around the rope. As a poetess and a 
woman of taste, she could not bring herself 
to disturb the dainty blossoms. So, leaving 
her own well to the convolvuli, she went and 
begged water of a neighbour ' — a pretty lit- 
tle vignette, surely, and expressed in five 
words. 

This new movement, which owes its real 
development to a remarkable man called 
Basho (1644-1649), a mystic of the Zen 
sect to the tip of his fingers, had an aim that 
was strictly practical. ' He wished to turn 
men's lives and thoughts in a better and a 
higher direction, and he employed one 
branch of art, namely poetry, as the vehicle 
for the ethical influence to whose exercise he 
devoted his life. The very word poetry (or 
haikai) came in his mouth to stand for 
morality. Did any of his followers trans- 
gress the code of poverty, simplicity, humil- 
ity, long-suffering, he would rebuke the of- 
fender with a "This is not poetry," meaning 
" This is not right." His knowledge of na- 
ture and his sympathy with nature were at 



112 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

least as intimate as Wordsworth's, and his 
sympathy with all sorts and conditions of 
men was far more intimate; for he never 
isolated himself from his kind, but lived 
cheerfully in the world.' ^ 

Now, this form of popular literature by 
virtue of its accessibility even to the poorest 
amateurs from the lowest ranks of the people, 
was markedly instrumental, as the now class- 
ical form of poetry had been during the Mid- 
dle Ages, in the cultivation of taste and good 
manners among all classes of the Japanese 
nation. Even among the ricksha men of to- 
day you find many such humble poets, taking 
snapshots as they run along the stony path 
of their miserable life. I wonder if your 
hansom drivers are equally aspiring in this 
respect. 

In all these phases of the development of 
our poetry, we notice, as one of its peculiar- 
ities, a strong inclination to the exercise of 
the witty side of our nature. Even if we 
leave out of consideration the so-called ' pil- 
low word' (makura-kotoba) , so profusely 

"^ B. H. Chamberlain's Basho and the Japanese 
Epigram, T. A. S. J., vol. xxx. pt. ii. 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 113 

resorted to in our ancient poems, part of 
which were nothing but a naive sort of jeu 
de mots, and the abundant use of other plays 
on words of later development, known as 
kakekotoha, jo, shuku, etc. (haikai-no-uta) , 
it is noteworthy that poems of a comic nature 
found a special place in the earliest imperial 
collection of Japanese odes named * Kokin- 
shifu,' which was compiled in the year a.d. 
908. This species has flourished ever since 
under the name of Kyoka, and also gave rise 
to a shortened form in seventeen syllables, 
called haikai-no-hokku. When in the hand 
of Basho this latter form developed itself 
into something higher and more serious, the 
witty and satirical Senryu, also in seventeen 
syllables, came to take its place. 

One thing to be specially noted in this con- 
nection is the introduction from China of the 
idea of poetic tournaments, the beauty of 
which consisted in the offhand and quick 
composition of one long series of odes by sev- 
eral persons sitting together, each supplying 
in turn either the upper half or the lower 
half as the case might be, the two in com- 
bination giving a poetical sense. This usage 



114 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

of capping verses known as renga came to 
be very popular, from the Court downward, 
as early as the thirteenth century. After a 
while the same practice was applied to comic 
poetry, thus producing the so-called haikai- 
no-renga, or comic linked verses. This 
coupling of verses gave plenty of occasion 
for sharpening one's wit as well as one's 
skill in extemporising. It is to a later at- 
tempt to express all these subtleties in the 
upper half of the poem composed by one per- 
son that the present kokku owed its origin. 
You can easily imagine the effect such an 
exercise produced on the popular mind. Be- 
sides the moral good which this literary pur- 
suit has brought to the populace, it has given 
a fresh opportunity for the cultivation of our 
habit of attaching sense to apparently mean- 
ingless groups of phenomena, and our fond- 
ness of laconic utterance and symbolic repre- 
sentation, not to say anything about our love 
of nature and simplicity. 

All this tends in my view to show that we 
Japanese have a strong liking for wit in the 
wider sense of the word. We try to solve a 
question, not by that slower but surer way 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 115 

of calm deliberation and untiring labour like 
the cool-headed Germans, but by an incan- 
descent flash of inspiration like the hot- 
blooded Frenchmen. This fact is singularly 
preserved in the earlier sense of the now 
sacred word Y amato-damashi, which had 
not its present meaning, viz., 'the spirit of 
Japan ' in the most elevated sense of that 
term, but signified the ' wit of the Japanese ' 
as contrasted with the * learning of the Chi- 
nese ' {ivakon as opposed to kansai). The 
word tamashi, which now expresses the idea 
of ' spirit,' corresponds in the compound in 
question to the French esprit in such com- 
binations as homme d' esprit or jeu d' esprit. 

Turning now to the consideration of other 
sets of phenomena, as an illustration of the 
Japanese character, let me tell you something 
about the tea-ceremony and kindred rites. 

To begin v>^ith the Cha-no-e (or Cha-no- 
yu), or tea-meeting, this much-spoken-of art 
originated among the Buddhist priests, who 
learned to appreciate the beverage from the 
Chinese. Indeed, the tea-plant itself was 
first introduced into Japan along with the 
name Cha (Chinese Ch'a) from the Celestial 



ii6 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

Empire, in the tenth century after Christ. 
During the following centuries its cultivation 
and the preparation of the drink was monop- 
olised by the priesthood, if we except the 
cases of a few well-to-do men of letters. This 
fact is gathered from the frequent mention of 
tea-cups offered to the emperor on the occa- 
sion of an imperial visit to a Buddhist mon- 
astery. During all this time a sense of some- 
thing precious and aristocratic was attached 
to this aromatic beverage, which had been 
regarded as a kind of rare drug of strange 
virtue in raising depressed spirits, and even 
of curing certain diseases. 

This high appreciation of the drink, as 
well as the need of ceremony in offering it 
to exalted personages, gradually developed 
in the hands of monks with plenty of leisure 
and a good knowledge of the high praise ac- 
corded to its virtues by the Chinese savants, 
into a very complicated rite as to the way of 
serving, and of being served with, a cup of 
tea. A print representing a man clad as a 
Buddhist priest in the act of selling the bev- 
erage in the street at a penny a cup is pre- 
served from a date as early as the fourteenth 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 117 

century, showing that the drink had then 
come to find customers even among the com- 
mon people. But the ceremony of Cha-no-e, 
as such, never made its way among them 
until many centuries after. It was at first 
fostered and elaborated only among the 
aristocracy. Already in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, when the luxury and extravagance of 
the Ashikaga Shogunate reached its zenith 
in the person of Yoshimasa (1435-1490), 
the tea-ceremony was one of the favourite 
pastimes of the highest classes. Yoshimasa 
himself was a great patron and connoisseur 
of the complicated rite, as well as of other 
branches of art, such as landscape gardening 
and the arrangement of flowers. 

There are two different phases of the tea- 
ceremony, the regular course and the sim- 
plified course, known among us as the ^ Great 
Tea ' and the * Small Tea.' In either case, 
it might be defined in its present form as a 
system of cultivating good manners as ap- 
plied to daily life, with the serving and drink- 
ing of a cup of tea at its centre. The main 
stress is laid on ensuring outwardly a grace- 
ful carriage, and inwardly presence of mind. 



ii8 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

As with the national form of wrestHng 
known as ju-jitsu, with its careful analysis 
of every push and pull down to the minutest 
details, so with the Cha-no-e, every move of 
body and limb in walking and sitting during 
the whole ceremony has been fully studied 
and worked out so as to give it the most 
graceful form conceivable. At the same time 
the calm and self-control shown by the par- 
taker in the rite is regarded as an essential 
element in the performance, without which 
ultimate success in it will be quite impossible. 
So it is more a physical and moral training 
than a mere amusement or a simple quench- 
ing of thirst. But this original sense has 
not always been kept in view even by the 
so-called masters of the tea-ceremony, who, 
like your dancing-masters, are generally con- 
sidered to be the men to teach us social eti- 
quette. Thus, diverted from its original idea,, 
the Cha-no-e is generally found to degener- 
ate into a body of conventional and meaning- 
less formalities, which, even in its most 
abbreviated form as the * Small Tea,' is 
something very tiresome, if not worse. To 
sit a la japonaise (not a la turque, which is 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 119 

not considered polite) for an hour, if not for 
hours together, on the matted floor to see 
the celebration of the monotonous rite, dar- 
ing to talk only little, and even then not 
above a whisper, in the smallest imaginable 
tea-room, is not what even a born Japanese 
of the present day can much appreciate, much 
less so Europeans, who would prefer being 
put in the stocks, unless they be themselves 
Cha-jin or tea-ceremonialists, that is to say, 
eccentrics. How to open the sliding-door ; 
how to shut it each time; how to bring and 
arrange the several utensils, with their sev- 
eral prescribed ways of being handled, into 
the tea-room ; how to sit down noiselessly in 
front of the boiling kettle which hangs over 
a brasier ; how to open the lid of the kettle ; 
how to put tea-powder in the cup; how to 
pour hot water over it ; how to stir the now 
green water with a bamboo brush; how to 
give the mixture a head of foam; how and 
where to place the cup ready for the expect- 
ing drinker — this on the part of the person 
playing the host or hostess ; and now on the 
part of the guest — how to take a sweet from 
the dish before him in preparation for the 



I20 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

coming" aromatic drink ; how to take up the 
cup now given him ; how to hold it with both 
hands; how to give it a gentle stir; how to 
drink it up in three sips and a half; how to 
wipe off the trace of the sipping left on the 
edge of the cup; how to turn the cup hori- 
zontally round; how to put it down within 
the reach of his host or hostess, etc., etc., ad 
infinitum — these are some of the essential 
items to be learned and practised. And for 
every one of them there is a prescribed form 
even to the slightest move and curve in which 
a finger should be bent or stretched, always 
in strict accordance with the attitude of other 
bodies in direct connection with it. The 
whole ceremony in its degenerated form is 
an aggregate of an immense number of 
comme il faufs, with practically no margin 
for personal taste. But even behind its pres- 
ent frigidity we cannot fail to discern the 
true idea and the good it has worked in past 
centuries. It has done a great deal of good, 
especially in those rough days at the end of 
the sixteenth century, when great warriors 
returning blood-stained from the field of bat- 
tle learned how to bow their haughty necks 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 121 

in admiration of the curves of beauty, and 
how to listen to the silvery note of a boiling 
tea-kettle. They could not help their stern 
faces melting into a naive smile in the serene 
simplicity of the tea-room, whose arrange- 
ment, true to the Zen taste to the very last 
detail of its structure, showed a studied 
avoidance of ostentation in form and colour. 
To this day it is always this Zen taste that 
rules supreme in the decoration of a Japanese 
house. 

Visit a Japanese gentleman whose taste is 
not yet badly influenced by the Western love 
of show and symmetry in his dwelling : you 
will find the room and the whole arrange- 
ment free from anything of an ostentatious 
nature. The colour of the walls and sliding- 
doors will be very subdued, but not on that 
account gloomy. In the niche you will see 
one or a single set of kakemono^ or pictures, 
at the foot of which, just in the middle of the 
slightly raised floor of the niche, we put some 
object of decoration — a sculpture, a vase 
with flowers, etc. These are both carefully 
changed in accordance with the season, or 
else in harmony with the ruling idea of the 



122 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

day, when the room is decorated in celebra- 
tion of some event or guest. This rule ap- 
plies to the other objects connected with the 
room — utensils, cushions, screens, etc. 

The European way of arranging a room 
is, generally speaking, rather revolting to our 
taste. We take care not to show anything 
but what is absolutely necessary to make a 
room look agreeable, keeping all other things 
behind the scenes. Thus we secure to every 
object of art that we allow in our presence a 
fair opportunity of being appreciated. This 
is not usually the case in a European dwell- 
ing. I have very often felt less crowded in a 
museum or in a bazaar than in your drawing- 
rooms. ' You know so well how to expose 
to view what you have,' I have frequently 
had occasion to say to myself, * but you have 
still much to learn from us how to hide, for 
exposition is, after all, a very poor means of 
showing.' 

To return to the main point, we owe to 
the Cha-no-e much of the present standard 
of our taste, which is, in its turn, nothing 
more than the Zen ways of looking at things 
as applied to everyday life. This is no won- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 123 

der, when we remember that it was in the 
tasteful hands of the Zen priests that the 
whole ceremony reached its perfection. In- 
deed, the word cha is a term which conveys 
to this day the main features of the Contem- 
plative sect to our mind. 

In connection with the tea-ceremony, there 
are some sister arts which have been equally 
effective in the proper cultivation of our 
taste. Landscape gardening, in which our 
object is to make an idealised copy of some 
natural scene, is an art that has been loved 
and practised among us for more than a 
thousand years, although it was not indig- 
enous like most things Japanese. This prac- 
tice of painting with tree and stone soon gave 
rise to another art, the miniature reproduc- 
tion of a favourite natural scene on a piece 
of board, and this is the forerunner of the 
later bonkei, or the tray-landscape, and its 
sister bonsai^ or the art of symbolising an ab- 
stract idea, such as courage, majesty, etc., by 
means of the growth of a dwarf tree. 

The same love that we feel for a symbolic 
representation is also to be traced in the ar- 
rangement of flowers. The practice of pre- 



124 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

serving cut branches, generally of flowering 
trees, in a vase filled with water is often men- 
tioned in our classical literature. But it was 
first in the sixteenth century that it assumed 
its present aspect, when, in conjunction with 
the Cha-no-e, it found a great patron in that 
most influential dilettante Shogun Yoshi- 
masa. Already in his time there were a great 
many principles to be learned concerning the 
way to give the longest life and the most 
graceful form to the branches put in a vase, 
besides investing the whole composition with 
a symbolic meaning. Up to this day we look 
upon this art as very helpful for the cultiva- 
tion of taste among the fair sex, who receive 
long courses of instruction by the generally 
aged masters of floral arrangement, who, 
along with their teaching in the treatment 
of plants, know how to instil ethics in their 
young pupils, taking the finished vase of 
flowers as the subject of conversation. The 
masters of the tea-ceremony are also well 
versed in arranging flowers in that simple 
manner which is yet full of meaning called 
cha-hana, or the * Zen type of floral art.' 
You see how much all these arts have con- 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 125 

tributed to the production of our taste, whose 
ideals are the disHke of loudness and love of 
symbolic representation, with a delicate feel- 
ing for the beauty of line as seen in things 
moving or at rest. This last quality must 
have been immensely augmented by the linear 
character of our drawing, and also by 
the great importance we are accustomed 
to attach to the shape and the strokes of 
the characters when we are learning to 
write. 

All these qualities you will see exemplified 
in any Japanese work of art — from a large 
picture down to a tiny wooden carving. Take 
up a girl's silk dress and examine it care- 
fully, and note how the lining is dyed and 
embroidered with as great, if not greater 
care, in order to make it harmonise in colour 
and design with the visible surface and add 
some exquisite meaning. Do not forget to 
look at the back when you come across a 
lacquered box, for it is not only the surface 
that receives our careful attention. And 
above all, you must always keep in mind 
that our artists think it a duty to be sug- 
gestive rather than explicit, and to leave 



126 THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 

something of their meaning to be divined by 
those who contemplate their works. 

The time is now come to conclude my 
essay at an exposition of the Japanese spirit. 
I think I have given you occasion to see 
something of both the strong and the weak 
sides of my countrymen ; for it is just where 
our favourable qualities lie that you will also 
find the corresponding weaknesses. The 
usual charges brought against us, that we are 
precocious, unpractical, frivolous, fickle, etc., 
are not worthy of serious attention, because 
they are all of them easily explained as but 
the attendant phenomena of the transitory 
age from which we are just emerging. Even 
the more sound accusation of our want of 
originality must be reconsidered in face of 
so many facts to the contrary, facts which 
show us to be at least in small things very 
original, almost in the French sense of that 
word. That we have always been ready to 
borrow hints from other countries is in a 
r^ e?.t measure to be explained by the con- 
ri^l-^-ation that we had from the very be- 
^':-n'v.p; the disadvantage and the advantage 



THE JAPANESE SPIRIT 127 

of having as neighbours nations with a great 
start in the race-course of civiHsation. The 
cause of our being small in great things, 
while great in small things, can be partly 
found in the financial conditions of the coun- 
try and in the non-individual nature of the 
culture we have received. These delicate 
questions will have to be raised again some 
centuries hence, when a healthy admixture 
of the European civilisation has been tried — • 
a civilisation the effect of which has been, on 
the whole, so beneficial to our development, 
that we feel it a most agreeable duty grate- 
fully to acknowledge our immense obligation 
to the nations of the West. 



APR 19 19G5 



